A Corollary to Moore’s Law

Computing speed doubles once every year and a half, and so does the electrical efficiency of processors, from laptops to servers. The pattern makes our computing lives more convenient. “There’s a little-known but very important parallel movement to Moore’s Law recently elucidated by Jonathan Koomey, an energy specialist at Stanford and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Koomey went back into the historical record and found that the electrical efficiency of computing has been increasing at the roughly the same pace as computing speed…And if you’re not sure why this is important, think back to the last time your phone ran out of batteries when you needed to make a call or you wished your laptop could last just another hour.”