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Limits to the energy efficiency of CMOS microprocessors | Epoch AI

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How far can the energy efficiency of CMOS microprocessors be pushed before hitting physical limits? We find room for a further 50 to 1000x improvement.

Summary Compared to the ENIAC in 1946, modern microprocessors can perform roughly a quadrillion times more computations for every unit of dissipated energy. This illustrates one of the most important trends in the history of computing – Koomey’s Law – under which the energy efficiency of computers has increased drastically over the last eight decades. But how much longer can this progress persist before hitting physical limits? The answer to this question has important implications for forecasts of future progress in hardware: if we are close to the fundamental limits, the returns to…

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