>> Call me cynical, but it seems that the design reality is that system demands and thus power use often expand to the maximum the system can provide or tolerat

>> Call me cynical, but it seems that the design reality is that system demands and thus power use often expand to the maximum the system can provide or tolerate. Remember, when transistors and ICs were devised and then went to ever-lower voltage/power, the per-function dissipation dropped by several orders of magnitude—you can’t argue with that fact. >> However, coincidentally with this good news, user requirements increased at a greater rate, so now you have server racks pushing almost 10 kW each—an almost unthinkable figure just a decade ago, up from about 2.4 kW each in 2011 according to one survey (I have seen others, and those numbers are similar) (Figure 3). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox