A New ‘Law’ for the Mobile Computing Era

The new gadgetry at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week owes a lot to the crisp articulation of ever-increasing computer performance known as Moore’s Law. First proclaimed in 1965 by Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore, it says that the number of transistors that can be put on a microchip doubles about every two years. But a new descriptive formulation that focuses on energy use seems especially apt these days. So much of the excitement and product innovation today centers on battery-powered, mobile computing — smartphones, tablets, and a host of devices based on digital sensors, like personal health monitors that track vital signs and calorie-burn rates. And the impact of low-power sensor-based computing is evident well beyond the consumer market. The trend in energy efficiency that has opened the door to the increasing spread of mobile computing is being called Koomey’s Law. It states that the amount of power needed to perform a computing task will fall by half every one and a half years.