ARM: Heretic in the church of Intel, Moore's Law & relating this to Solar
http://www.computerworld.com/action/art ... Id=9131098
Some non-techies may shy away from this type of thing, but you should realize that dynamics like Moore’s Law illustrate powerful principles that ultimately have huge impacts far beyond what they are addressing on the surface.
This article points to the fact that in the quest for greater mobility for computing, there is a simultaneous need for reduction of energy usage per computation so that batteries last longer.
Moore’s Law of doubling transistor density has coincided with a rapid decline in the amount of energy needed per computation.
Moore’s Law in effect meant that a shrinking amount of matter and energy was required to create a computer chip with increasing capacity.
But the decline of energy cost per computation will continue even when/if Moore’s Law stop working on dropping the construction cost of the chip of a given capacity.
In effect Moore’s Law is just a subordinate law to the bigger notion that humanity is constantly figuring out how to get more and more functionality from less and less matter and energy.
Haitz Law does the same for LED lights, in noting a continuing rate of growing efficiency of converting electricity into light, and the dropping price per light fixture.
And one day, someone will name the Solar Manufacturing Cost Reduction trend, which has seen the price per watt of solar panels fall by three-fold every decade since 1970.
Ironically, some have cited the fact that solar panels don’t obey “Moore’s Law” in terms of a periodic doubling of sunlight-harvesting efficiency improvements on the panel itself.
But what they have failed to see is the steadily growing efficiency of applying materials and energy overall to the harvesting of sunlight, since the panel themselves are already at 10% - 25% can only reach 100% efficiency at converting sunlight, and thus grows somewhat slowly towards the limit of 100%, the efficiency of using our overall technical infrastructure for producing solar panels continues to accelerate, and we are nowhere near the upper limits of efficiencies.
So we have two types of laws here that have been conflated with Moore’s Law, but for which the ARM chip approach exposes the distinction:
1. cost reductions per quantity of utility when operating the chip (or panel) - ARM’s Law
2. cost reductions per quantity of matter and energy required to produce that portion of a chip (or panel) with a given capability - Moore’s Law
What the solar detractors have really noted is that when we look at a single panel, it doesn’t follow an exponentialized version of ARM’s Law, ie reduced cost through operational efficiency, since it can’t grow exponentially towards 100%, when it is already so high.
However, on a single panel basis we know that solar is obeying a type of Moore’s Law for exponential reduction in the cost of manufacturing, > 3X/decade.
And on a global scale, if we think of the world as a potential harvester of sunlight, we are doubling the number of the solar analogy to ‘transistors,’ - Megawatts of solar panel absorption capacity - at a rate very similar to what is traditionally thought of as Moore’s Law, ie every 12 – 24 months.
And consequently, also on a global scale, we are also doubling the Earth’s efficiency of harvesting the sun in the form of electricity.
Eventually, we will saturate the exponential curve for harvesting sunlight on the Earth’s surface.
But just putting the panels above the Earth’s atmosphere and ever closer to the sun radically grows the amount of energy that can be harvested.
The amount of the sun’s energy that hits the Earth’s surface is gigantic - 10,000 X - what all of humanity uses through every form of energy every day.
But the energy that hits the Earth’s surface is insignificant compared to what the Sun produces.
Those that try to quote Physics’ Laws of Thermodynamics against Solar power as a solution to our energy needs and claim that there are limits to the Earth’s Carrying Capacity are either dishonest or incredibly stupid.
Life and civilization are just pinwheels in the Solar System being driven by an insignificant fraction of the Sun’s power.
There is no end in sight to the Solar Exponential.