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Ask Jonathan Koomey About 'Koomey's Law'
A few weeks back, we posted a story here that described Koomey's Law, which (in the spirit of Moore's Law) identifies a long-standing trend in computer technology. While Moore's prediction centers on the transistor density of microprocessors, Jonathan Koomey focuses instead on computing efficiency — in a nutshell, computing power per watt, rather than only per square nanometer. In particular, he asserts that the energy efficiency of computing doubles every 1.5 years. (He points out that calling this a "law" isn't his idea, or his doing — but it's sure a catchy turn of phrase.) Koomey has agreed to respond to your questions about his research and conclusions in the world of computing efficiency. Please observe the Slashdot interview guidelines: ask as many questions as you want, but please keep them to one per comment.
What is your take on the interpretation of Futurists -- like Raymond Kurzweil -- in regards to extrapolating these 'laws' out to extreme distances?
My work here is dung.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sorry, the question there wasn't clear. How about "Could the whole process be bypassed by the near-infinite efficiency of reversible computers?"
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Mr. Koomey, if we take your numbers from the attached article, which may not have been quoted correctly...
Feynman indicated that there was approximately 100 billion times efficiency improvement possible, and 40,000 times improvement has happened so far.
If we take Feynman's number at face value, this means that if computing efficiency improvements continue at the current rate (doubling every 18 months,) we will reach the theoretical maximum in 2043.
Based on that, do you believe that we will see a dramatic reduction in efficiency improvements in the next 10-20 years as we approach the theoretical limit, or do you think Feynman was conservative in his estimate?
Thanks!