NYT today explores the implications of efficiency improvements in computing, even though the article doesn't mention computing efficiency once!
Steve Lohr wrote a great article for the NY Times today titled “The Internet Gets Physical”, where he explores what he thinks is the next big thing (and I think he’s right). The article states:
“…the protean Internet technologies of computing and communications are rapidly spreading beyond the lucrative consumer bailiwick. Low-cost sensors, clever software and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care and food distribution. The consumer Internet can be seen as the warm-up act for these technologies.”
Internet watchers are just now waking up to this new potential, which is driven by trends in the efficiency of computing that we identified in our recent paper in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (Koomey et al. 2011). The electrical efficiency of computing (the number of computations that can be completed per kilowatt-hour of electricity) has doubled about every one and a half years since the dawn of the computer age, so that the power needed to perform a task requiring a fixed number of computations will fall by half every 1.5 years. Devices performing such tasks can thus become smaller and less power consuming, making many more mobile computing applications feasible.
These technologies will allow us to better match energy services demanded with energy services supplied, and vastly increase our ability to collect and use data in real time. They will also help us minimize the energy use and emissions from accomplishing human goals, a technical capability that we sorely need if we are to combat climate change in any serious way. The future environmental implications of these trends are profound and only just now beginning to be understood (Greene 2011, The Economist 2011)
If you know of specific examples of innovations in low power computing, sensors, and controls, I’m eager to hear about them, as I’m starting to think about how to describe these trends for a broader audience. So send me email!
For more background, check out my recent radio interviews on this topic. Also see the talk I gave at Microsoft in December 2010.
References
Greene, Kate. 2011. “A New and Improved Moore’s Law.” In Technology Review. September 12.
“A deeper law than Moore’s?” In The Economist. October 10, 2011.
Koomey, Jonathan G., Stephen Berard, Marla Sanchez, and Henry Wong. 2011. “Implications of Historical Trends in The Electrical Efficiency of Computing." IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. vol. 33, no. 3. July-September. pp. 46-54.
