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Why We Need a Second Moore's Law
Roland Piquepaille writes "In its April issue, Wired Magazine argues that we need a second Moore's law, this time about overall efficiencies of our computers and other electronic devices. The subtitle of the article summarizes it: "If we don't do something about increasing battery life, we're toast." Michael S. Malone, the author, says that the first Moore's law is endangered, not because the semiconductor industry cannot build new generation of chips, but because we will not be able to provide them with enough power. And he contends that the problem arises from the fact that we are using more and more wireless devices, which obviously are not connected to a plug. This overview contains selected excerpts of this eye-opening article."
Moore's Law? Murphy's Law.
What we really need is a Meta Moore's law, to tell us how long it takes before we need a new Moore's law.
Well if it's some day proven wrong, why just make another law that someday also might be inaccurate...
What's wrong, are engineers getting too much sex?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The more I hear about power and energy issues and American obesity issues, the more I think we'd be served well by installing some kind of human power generator factory similar to a gym, where maybe people going on lots of exercise bikes could charge up portable batteries or something.
I mean Hell, $50 for a new cellphone battery when yours craps out, or two hours on the bike with a better rechargable...
People with too much energy and electronic devices that need energy. There has to be a way to make it work together.
Ok... I just reread that, and I've officially been awake way too long.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
What we need is a fourth axis of development - a systematic improvement of overall system efficiency, from the individual silicon gate, through motherboards and displays, all the way up to the Internet itself. How do we do it? Exhaustively.
Exactly. When processor speeds and memory was low the industry did their best to fit what they could in the limited space. Now that we have more room we are being lazy and only concentrating on making things "larger than life" instead of faster and smaller.
We should really start to concentrate on making the software run best under what we currently have. I know that Intel and Kingston wouldn't exactly be happy but our pockets and our grid would.
Moore's law is an observation, not something that the industry is forced to follow. You can't just say "we need more efficiency - let's define a new Moore's law".
Phil
I dont think theres need for new laws, even for Moores law, we just need more technological advancement and new innovations ...
With the author pointing out subtle technical details like that, wouldn't this article be more appropriate for a more electronics-savvy audience than Slashdot?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Which is why my powerbook battery lasts so damn long. One of the many reasons I am using it now more often than any windows-based laptop I have ever owned and/or used.
Don't bother arguing speed, saying that the powerbook is years behind in MHz, etc. The powerbook is just better optimized to use less power and run longer.
This sounds a little dodgy to me. This statement seems to imply that a law is 'needed' to fix a current problem (i.e. batteries not keeping up with processor power). But why would some contrived 'law' do anything to solve this problem? After all, the original Moore's law was a prediction - no more, no less. No one has ever actually been guided by it.
I feel that putting the problem forth in this way is just clouding the issue.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
What many people don't realize is that Moore didn't just say the one famous sentence. He wrote a short paper explaining his predictions and they were far more complicated than simply doubling power while maintaining cost. He qualified it by explaining it would only be possible if certain things happen. He was well aware of certain limits which we've now passed with unexpected technologies.
So while many here will complain his prediction was flawed because he didn't consider so many other things, remember he actually had a lot more in mind than just regularly doubling speed.
Developers: We can use your help.
I think the battery power does not have to be solved by only "internal" system efficiency, but also by "external" system efficiency.
What if the places to charge our devices become pervasive, and just like you get can find a gas station almost everywhere you seem to be running out of gas, you should be able to find a place to charge your batteries.
Of course this is easeir said than done. The "external" system is developed well for vehicles running on gas - but it is not well developed for vehicles on electric power. That is why electric cars lag so far behind ....
Anyway, the crux of my post is that the system efficiencies not have to improve internally in the "super"devices, but also externally to the devices. .
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Marshmallows taste better than silicon chips when squished between chocolate bars and graham crackers. The improvement in taste of marshmallow s'mores is immediately and at least 1.5x noticeably better with every silicon-based s'more eaten.
really, springs, clocksprings to be exact. I brought this up in another discussion last week. I have two radios (baygen/freeplay)that make quite good use of windup to tighten a spring to run a microgenerator technology in lieu of batteries. I have another radio that has built in solar and a crank on the side that is a direct generator to on board rechargeable battery, plus it has another compartment that holds disposable batteries, or you can plug in a voltage adapter. It's an inexpensive radio, but it has 4 way power and works quite well. I understand now that grundig has an even higher quality radio with a similar crank to microgenerator scheme. This sort of technology makes use of extremely efficient energy conversion and energy storage, ie, biochemical from the human body, that beats heck out of any battery out there. How about at least starting with a PDA to see if the windup style concepts have merit and can be adapted up the useage scale then? I see a lot of these PDAs use AA or AAA batteries, the same as these small radios, seems a natural to me. Even just a power adapter that is the spring, crank and battery bank, and that plugs into existing PDAs if they have a DC jack in. something along those lines. It's just not that hard to run a tiny crank for 30 to 60 seconds.
Wired Magazine argues that we need a second Moore's law, this time about overall efficiencies of our computers and other electronic devices.
We need less laws not moore! Let the industry regulate itself.
I can't believe that anyone would think moore gubmint regulation and red tape would make computers more efficient!!
Unbelievabe!
n its April issue, Wired Magazine argues that we need a second Moore's law, this time about overall efficiencies of our computers and other electronic devices. The subtitle of the article summarizes it: "If we don't do something about increasing battery life, we're toast."
I can imagine the board room at Intel where the chairman is yelling, "The 3rd quarter numbers suggest we aren't going to make Moore's law this year! I want people to double their efforts -- cancel lunch until further notice!"
I can guarantee that if wired magazine invents a new moore's law, it is going to have zero effect on technology. Anyways, Moore's law is based on an observation, maybe we should look at the growth of power requirements and fit it to that.
I suggest we call the wired law: Moron's Law
Am I the only one who thinks he still should be?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Moore's first law is a two-edged sword - more transistors for the same price is great for computers, but it's hell on batteries: As the processor power doubles, the power consumption also rises.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but: Malone, the author, is exaggerating by implying that the size of a transistor is remainaining constant while the number of transistors doubles. As I understand it, the smaller the processor, the less power it requires. Is this right?
Sure the chip industry needs to work on energy usage (perhaps through either fuel-cell batteries for lap-tops). Also, Malone is merely following the wagon with Intel's recent processor naming change. They've already figured out, that cycles are losing their prior applicability.
For batteries to get better at a Moore's law rate, we need some different physical laws. But we can, as other posters mention, improve on efficiency of other parts. Cooler-running processors and low-power wireless - a la BlueTooth or 802.11[whatever-letter-means-low-power] will help.
To build a better battery has been a goal for longer than computers have been in around.
OK, when on the move, how many people who are doing word processing need more than the features of WordPerfect 5, the early versions of Excel for Windows and that kind of thing?
What we need is a really low electrical power CPU - optimized to take as little electricity as possible, but which is capable of running these kinds of applications acceptably quickly. It probably doesn't need to be more than 50MHz. Put this in a ultra-lightweight laptop style case, using solid state storage for disk (you can get USB memory sticks with 512MB which is more than sufficient for this class of computing) and have the battery go a day or two between charges.
My mobile phone is a case in point. Although it's not a word processor, I've got an organizer, email client, lightweight web browser, camera, SSH client, IRC client and pager all rolled into one, and it'll go ten days without a charge on standby, and can be used for 7 hours on one charge with a tiny battery. I can even make phone calls on it. Make essentially a notebook with mobile phone technology, and you've got an excellent portable internet terminal that you can write documents, make spreadsheets, compile small programs etc. on.
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I second that. It makes me sad when people say that it doesn't matter the software is inefficient, because computers will get faster, which will solve the problem. What this means is that, because the developers were sloppy, the users have to pay more (they need faster and typically more power-hungry machines).
Making more efficient software benefits users _now_, instead of in 5 years when computers have gotten faster and new power sources have been invented, and new software will have been invented that needs even faster computers. Having a lot of CPU power is no excuse for wasting it.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"I'm thinking more of a way to utilize kinetic energy and translate it into stored power."
The problem is not with the abiliuty to generate the power but a way to efficiently store it with something that is at a reasonable size. Batteries/Power Cells are not moving at a very fast pace compared to the rest of the industry. We can generate all the power in the world but we don't have a small cost effective way to store it yet.
Evolution or ID?
As a whole, we're generally a pretty environmentally-conscious bunch. That said, we geeks find ourselves dependent on more and more powerful, long-lasting batteries that do horiffic damage to the environment when not properly disposed of.
How then do we balance our concern for the environment against our ever-increasing portable power needs? For the time being, these seem to be conflicting goals.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
All the author is saying is we need to reapply Moore's law to another aspect of electronic manufacturing. Specifically to the creation of better, more efficient, power supplies for our wireless devices.
This is hardly ground breaking. Companies like to permutate Moore's laws all of the time. I've even heard marketing guys try to use it as a model for deciding a schedule to promote the next product.
Focusing on more efficient power supplies is indeed a worthy cause. And there are already attempts out there to use things such as fuel cell technology to help rectify this problem. So the author of the article shouldn't feel as if the issue is being ignored.
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I don't think there is a problem with power usage here. Cellphones have the power to be full fledged telephones, electronic organizers and even office computers (mail, word processing, web browsing, etc.) all in one. Yet, one cellphone battery charge lasts a lot longer than a few years ago. And I think noone would argue cellphones aren't wireless.
If cellphones can do it in such small form factors, why wouldn't larger devices like notebooks be able to do the same? I know that most pc-compatible notebooks are engineered for speed, not battery life, but look at Apple's, for example. They live for more than 5 hours (and they really do) on one charge, which I think is quite respectable.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I can't count how many times I heard a professor say "don't optimize", "memory is cheap".
When everyone is more worried about making thier code pretty instead of efficient, well we get what we've got. Feh.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Hasn't it been pretty well proven that too much manual optimisation doesn't pay off? The time taken to optimise delays entry to the market, causing the optimised product to be obsoleted by newer (unoptimised) technology.
Isn't this pointing to a requirement for better automated design software, able to do optimisation in essentialy zero time. Any optimisation between manufacturers will require their design tools to automatically exchange data. I can't see too many manufacturers being prepared to swap such detailed design information (unless they are 'open source').
Due to the overuse of the Rule of Thumb it is obivious that we need another appendage to name a rule after. I suggest one of the following,
[ ] Rule of Pinky(the Pinky Rule)
[ ] Rule of the Middle Finger(the FU Rule)
[ ] Rule of the Pointy Finger(the Blame someone else Rule)
[ ] Belly Button Rule(the Lint Rule)
[ ] The Little Piggy Rules
[ ] Rule of Nose(The "Smelt it, Dealt it" Rule)
Be sure to only pick one.
Yes, wireless devices are becoming more prevelant, but they will never fully replace wired fixed workstations. While we can always work towards wireless devices that use less power, better batteries, and better wireless connectivity, it will not match the speed and power of a desktop. The idea that battery life is going to limit the semiconductor industry is foolish.
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NSFWI disagree with the terms of this article. He's right if you're talking about putting the fastest possible technology in portable devices -- but we've NEVER been able to do that. If you want a "Moore's Law" for portable devices, it's that when you drop the clock frequency of a processor its power requirements drop still faster. The processors in current cell phones put the original IBM PC to shame, and in ten years they'll be approaching the speeds of current desktop machines, and even though those desktops will be light years ahead, the portables will be plenty nice.
After Sean Connery, each succesive actor who plays James Bond will get worse by a factor of 1.5.
Or we could simply go nuclear. The biggest problem with radioisotope generators is the problem of keeping them out of landfills, and eventually our water supply. If we solve that problem, we can power laptops and cellphones for half a decade or better.
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Is the law still working for he amount of power used? I understand that the newest chips do use more power, but shouldn't that be the approach.
Good point, but there are other factors at work. What the article ignores is that the current law is still working fine. The amount of power used by an x-MHz chips has been steadily declining. I remember when a machine with a 16 MHz processor needed a 200W power supply -- now we have machines that are orders of magnitude faster and still use a 200W power supply.
What has changed is that people insist on having desktop power in a laptop form factor. Another change has been a move to architectures that do more per clock cycle -- old processors often took 4 or more cycles per instruction. New processors, using pipelined and superscalar architectures, dispatch and retire multiple instructions per clock cycle. Technologies like hyperthreading boosts utilization of the CPU's logical units and thus increase power. Modern CPUs draw more power because they do more per cycle.
Moore's Law is fine. That mobile devices lag desktop devices in performance (or suffer from poor battery life) has nothing to do with Moore. The computing power of a 1 watt processor continues its steayd rise.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Thats a Uk cash Sterling Pound to a genuine pinch of shit (poo, crap, jobbies, turd).
/.ers
Its a quality old North East England expression meaning 'a surefire bet'. i.e. you are inviting bets of a pinch of shit - for which you are willing to pay out a . Which is a bet I'd take - if it werent for the fact that in the act of pinching the shit I'd get shit in my fingernails. That said - a is worth about 1.9 of your american $s these days - so it might be an attractive deal to some of you unemployed
Such devices have been available for decades, litterally. This one is way fancier than the one that was at home during my childhood, but for 59.90 (VAT incl.) that's just a steal.
The author is just completely and totally wrong... There's no better way to put it, I'm afraid.
Let's start off with an example... My good old 33MHz 486 notebook had a fairly large battery that would only last about 2 hours. Now, I've got a 1.2GHz notebook, with a far larger screen, smaller/lighter battery, and the battery life is much BETTER, not worse. What's more, there are notebooks much faster than mine, with 5+ hour battery life, and are still lighter.
The main reason is that ALL the components are getting more effecient. The hard drive is a significant drain on your batteries, but they are getting quite a bit more effecient every day. Things like the LCD backlight are becomming much more effecient (and brighter) at the same time. But that's just to start...
Power supplies are getting MUCH more effecient, and batteries are improving quite a bit as well (not quite doubling every 18 months, more like every 24 months).
Although the author seems to think otherwise, processors are becomming more effecient as well. My notebook only uses 30watts at MAX CPU/HDD utilization, and averages about 15 watts. Desktop processors are becomming more effecient quite quickly, just not as quickly as the speed is ramped up. While a 500MHz AMD processor used 42W, a similar 1,000MHz processor used 65W. That's right, effeciency IS improving quickly.
But that's only on the desktop front. If you look at notebooks, you will see that effeciency is even closer to matching performance improvements. It's just a matter that Intel/AMD are willing to spend the extra money on making notebook chips more effecient, while they aren't willing to spend much money on making desktop chips use less power. (which is why I'd personally like to have an ATX mobo that accepts a mobile Intel/AMD processors).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Amen. I learned so much from working on small, underpowered systems. Having to think about where your CPU cycles and disk space are going forces you to pick up much more of a feel for how things really work. (e.g. I'm running out of space in /var - let's see what all those files are *really* for. What packages can I lose? What can I turn off or tweak? Is there a better way of doing this?)
Eventually you acquire a low-level "feel" for what the machine's doing, and that's how you're able to fix problems later along the line. I know it doesn't matter in the long run, but I *hate* seeing inefficient use of resources. Even things like scripts using awk when they could use cut piss me off. It's lazy. Understand your craft.
Over the last ten years my computers have got faster and faster. (Also hotter and hotter and louder and louder.) Have I got more and more productive? No. I can't write a letter any more quickly with Word on a 2+GHz XP machine than I could with Wordworth on my 30MHz Amiga in 1992.
I haven't replaced my personal machine in about five years, and I've got no plans to do so any time soon. Even 20GHz won't make me write quicker, read quicker or think quicker. I'm more interested in machines running cooler, quieter and cheaper.