3 ms·
Laudauer's principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle) tells us that you can't delete
by __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Laudauer's principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle) tells us that you can't delete a bit without releasing some heat. As the new time digits come in and overwrite the old ones (in the framebuffer, in the LCD, likely other places too) this would occur as the previous digits were deleted. So the only case where showing the time would not take more power is one where other things are not held equal, e.g. some quirk of the software ends up doing more work to ignore the time than to show it (I'd call such a thing a bug).
This effect is likely vanishlingly small, definitely overshadowed by engineering considerations like the voltage used when walking pixels through changes and such. But still, it's a physics nudge towards "yes".
- ramraj07 1y agoWhen the start menu is a react native app that spikes up the cpu needing billions of flops just to do that, I doubt this number will make a difference.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y agoAgreed, the dominant effect would likely be which ads are being served to the start menu, or which user data is being exfiltrated to Microsoft at the time.
- dlcarrier 1y agoIs that true? Was Active Desktop just a preview of what's to come?
- internet2000 1y agoWasn't that debunked already?
- HPsquared 1y agoWhat if it's an OLED screen and the clock is in a dark font on a light background, so adding seconds means less light is emitted? (Light mode only)
- __MatrixMan__ 1y agoYeah good point. With large enough pixels and pathological color choices you could almost certainly derive the opposite result. It would be interesting to test it over a remote desktop session where the screen on the device under test is off. That would eliminate a lot of factors related to the display. Presumably you'd see that the network traffic is either larger to begin with, or doesn't compress quite as well, giving you another reason to say "yes, but what if..."
- bee_rider 1y agoLandauer’s principle is an information-theoretic result about the fundamental cost of computations. With CMOS, every logic gate has multiple transistors, some of which just get charged and dumped to ground with every state transition anyway. It is like worry about Carnot’s limit… for a motor boat.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y agoWell if you have two nearly identical motor boats and you're looking for differences, they might be quite small.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoI'm kind of sad that reversible computing turned out to be mostly hype.