Koomey's law

Koomey’s law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. The number of computations per joule of energy dissipated has been doubling approximately every 1.57 years. This trend has been remarkably stable since the 1950s (R2 of over 98%) and has actually been somewhat faster than Moore’s law. Jon Koomey articulated the trend as follows: “at a fixed computing load, the amount of battery you need will fall by a factor of two every year and a half.”[1]

Contents

Implications

Because of Koomey’s law, the amount of battery needed for a fixed computing load will fall by factor of 100 every decade.[2] As computing devices become smaller and more mobile, this trend may be even more important than improvements in raw processing power for many applications. Furthermore, energy costs are becoming an increasingly important determinant of the economics of data centers, further increasing the importance of Koomey’s law.

History

Dr. Jon Koomey was the lead author, along with Stephen Berard, Marla Sanchez, and Henry Wong in the article in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing that first documented the trend.[1] It was further discussed in MIT’s Technology Review[3] and in a widely discussed post on the “Economics of Information” blog.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b Koomey, Jonathan; Berard, Stephen; Sanchez, Marla; Wong, Henry; 
Stanford University “Implications of Historical Trends in the Electrical Efficiency of Computing” Annals of the History of Computing, IEEE, March 2011 
Volume: 33 Issue:3, pages 46 - 54 
ISSN: 1058-6180 
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/MAHC.2010.28 
Date of Publication: 29 March 2010
  2. ^ a b “Is Koomey's Law eclipsing Moore's Law?”
  3. ^ Kate Greene “A New and Improved Moore's Law: Under ‘Koomey's law,’ it's efficiency, not power, that doubles every year and a half.” Technology Review, September 12, 2011.

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