4 ms·
The Vacuum Tube's Power Law [pdf]
- jakedata 4y agoExtrapolating from this chart, Spinal Tap's amplifiers which went "up to 11" in 1984 would now be approximately seven orders of magnitude more powerful. Ear protection is advised.
- InCityDreams 4y agohttps://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Disaster_Area https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Disaster_Area
- crmd 4y agoI design tube guitar amplifiers. (1) excellent reference (2) that was a 100 watt JCM800 Marshall in the scene. 7 orders of magnitude increase means the amp’s output transformer would look something like this[0] which is pretty rad [0] https://www.westrafo.com/15-gw-of-transformer-power-shipped-to-the-usa/ https://www.westrafo.com/15-gw-of-transformer-power-shipped-...
- engineer_22 4y agoVaclav Smil is a great scientist
- readingnews 4y agoI find it modestly interesting that he is comparing power density (of tubes) to transistors per unit area (moors postulate, its not a law)... I think it could be worth noting the Dennard scaling here, in that the power density of transistors (chip wide) is remaining nearly constant due to us lowering the Vdd of the transistor on every generation of reducing the channel width. So, the tubes got much more powerful, the transistors are getting more numerous, but at the same time using less and less power each.
- initramfs 4y agoThere is also Koomey's Law https://rhombus-tech.net/whitepapers/ecocomputing_07sep2015/ https://rhombus-tech.net/whitepapers/ecocomputing_07sep2015/ If I had a master's thesis, it'd be that the increased system requirements of bloated software upgrades prevents Koomey's law from allowing solar powered smartphones and laptops: https://hackaday.io/project/177716-the-libre-autarkic-laptop https://hackaday.io/project/177716-the-libre-autarkic-laptop Working prototype (not mine) : https://www.freethegameboy.info/ https://www.freethegameboy.info/