Implications of Historical Trends in the Electrical Efficiency of Computing

Author

Koomey, Jonathan G. ; Berard, Stephen ; Sanchez, Marla ; Wong, Henry

Volume

33

Issue

3

fYear

2011

fDate

3/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

46

Lastpage

54

Abstract

The electrical efficiency of computation has doubled roughly every year and a half for more than six decades, a pace of change comparable to that for computer performance and electrical efficiency in the microprocessor era. These efficiency improvements enabled the creation of laptops, smart phones, wireless sensors, and other mobile computing devices, with many more such innovations yet to come. The Web Extra appendix outlines the data and methods used in this study.

Keywords

laptop computers; low-power electronics; mobile handsets; notebook computers; power aware computing; Web Extra; electrical computing efficiency; laptops; microprocessor; mobile computing devices; smart phones; wireless sensors; Battery charge measurement; Computer performance; Electric variables measurement; History; Microprocessors; Mobile computing; Moore´s Law; Portable computers; Power generation; Moore´s law; computer performance; electrical efficiency; history of computing; mobile computing; power usage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Annals of the History of Computing, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1058-6180

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MAHC.2010.28

Filename

5440129