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Energy efficient computing is a very exciting field. I hope it will get more attention driven by these economic constraints. As a short teaser: Landauers princ
by niemandhier 1y ago
Energy efficient computing is a very exciting field. I hope it will get more attention driven by these economic constraints.
As a short teaser:
Landauers principle suggests that the energy required to erase one bit off information is bounded from below by k_BTln(2). This could lead us down a path towards reversible computing, to avoid energy costs for deleting information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing
- wmf 1y agoThe work started around 10-15 years ago and is now largely done. Many people confuse large absolute numbers like 1 kW with inefficiency but today's GPUs/TPUs are close to the practical efficiency limit with today's 3 nm technology.
- estimator7292 1y agoI think it's mostly because laypeople think that all heat is wasted heat. Most people are pretty surprised to learn that there's a fundamental energy cost to flip a bit and that there even is a lower limit to the amount of heat generated by a bit flip.
- beeflet 1y agoI think the problem is that you can't get the chips hot enough to drive an efficient industrial process unless you are using GaN or something. The carnot cycle on waste heat is bad
- adrianN 1y agoThey might be close to the limit for what they do (I don’t know), but are they close to the limit of what we need them for?