I am bewildered by this argument... [Heck Ive recently learnt that using ellipses is an easy way to produce literature... So there...]
On Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:36:50 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > It is my contention that, had Intel and AMD spent the last few decades > optimizing for power consumption rather than speed, we probably could run > a server off, well, perhaps not a watch battery, but surely a factor of > 100 improvement in efficiency isn't unreasonable given that we're just > moving a picogram of electrons around? This is fine and right. I personally would pay more if my PCs/laptops etc were quieter/efficient-er. So we agree... upto here! > On Thu, 12 Jun 2014 12:16:08 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote: > > On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > >> I'm just pointing out that our computational technology uses over a > >> million times more energy than the theoretical minimum, and therefore > >> there is a lot of room for efficiency gains without sacrificing > >> computer power. I never imagined that such viewpoint would turn out to > >> be so controversial. > > The way I understand it, you're citing an extremely theoretical minimum, > > in the same way that one can point out that we're a long way from > > maximum entropy in a flash memory chip, so it ought to be possible to > > pack a lot more data onto a USB stick. > Um, yes? > Hands up anyone who thinks that today's generation of USB sticks will be > the highest capacity ever, that all progress in packing more memory into > a thumb drive (or the same memory into a smaller drive) will cease > effective immediately? > Anyone? > > The laws of physics tend to put > > boundaries that are ridiculously far from where we actually work - I > > think most roads have speed limits that run a fairly long way short of > > c. > "186,000 miles per second: not just a good idea, it's the law" > There's no *law of physics* that says cars can only travel at the speeds > they do. Compare how fast a typical racing car goes with the typical > 60kph speed limit in suburban Melbourne. Now compare how fast the > Hennessey Venom GT goes to that speed limit. > http://www.autosaur.com/fastest-car-in-the-world/?PageSpeed=noscript Now you (or I) are getting completely confused. If you are saying that the Hennessey Venom (HV) is better than some standard vanilla Ford/Toyota (FT) based on the above, thats ok. In equations: maxspeed(HV) = 250 mph maxspeed(FT) = 150 mph so HV is better than FT. Ok... But from your earlier statements you seem to be saying its better because: 250 mph is closer to 186,000 mps (= 670 million mph) than 150 mph Factually this is a correct statement. Pragmatically this is as nonsensical as comparing a mile and a kilogram. > Speed limits for human-piloted ground-based transport ("cars") are more > based on social and biological factors than engineering ones. Similarly, > there are biological factors that force keyboards to be a minimum size. > We probably could build a keyboard where the keys were 0.1mm square, but > what would be the point? Who could use it? Those social and biological > factors don't apply to computing efficiency, so it's only *engineering* > factors that prevent us from being able to run your server off a watch > battery, not the laws of physics. As best as I can see you are confused about the difference between science and engineering. Saying one car is better engineered than another on direct comparison (150mph<250mph) is ok Saying one car is better than another because of relation to physics limits (c-150>c-250) is confusing science and engineering. Likewise saying AMD and Intel should have done more due diligence to their clients (and the planet) by considerging energy efficiency is right and I (strongly) agree. But compare their products' realized efficiency with theoretical limits like Landauers is a type-wrong statement -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
