A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
Back in the midsts of time, as these words were scrolling up cinema screens across the world, boffins were working hard on creating machines - vastly complex technological feats of the modern age, that had the staggering ability to add 1 and 1 together (and, with alarming reliabily, get the answer 2 - or 10 in binary - every time).
These fantastic creations could take strings of 0’s and 1’s, and perform staggering tasks with them (so long as each staggering task could be broken down sufficiently to adding 0 and 0, 1 and 0, or 1 and 1).
Standards were established to make life easier (like ASCII), and suddenly these strings of binary digits could be manipulated to form text - then, by virtue of 0’s and 1’s in precisely the right timing, these letters could be displayed on a screen.
To actually achieve anything useful, careful planning was required to make machines that could work through millions of digits a second, and suddenly, the age of the home computer was upon us.
Skip forwards to today. We now enjoy machines with the uncanny ability to do precisely the same thing (ie add 1 and 1 and get 10), but to perform the task at a speed that makes the early home computers look like nothing more than an abacus. However, the basic task being performed is identical.
I remember receiving my first computer for Christmas 1982. It was a 16K Sinclair Spectrum, which was where my adoration of Sinclair design and products all began. It was a modern marvel, with colour, graphics, sound (of a fashion!) and had amazing processing power, with ample memory for most tasks. In the box was the computer, the manuals (back when the manuals were actually filled with useful information), the Horizons starter tape, tape leads, and a 9V transformer. All of this processing power could get all the electricity it required from a single small PSU. There were no hulking heatsinks and no noisy fans - this small black box provided all the power needed.
Skip forwards, once again, to today. I am sitting in front of an very average PC with regards to power - it’s an Athlon 3000 complete with a gig of ram, a couple of hard drives, and other assorted gubbins. The case contains no less than 6 fans all in (3 case fans, a PSU fan, a CPU fan and a GPU fan) all whirring away. And making noise. And using electricity.
The PSU is a 500W affair - a far cry from the 7.2W transformer that the original speccy required. While this does give me room to manouevre on the power front, I feel sure that my system would eat a 300W supply for breakfast.
Now then - basic laws of physics - energy cannot be created or destroyed - only converted from one form to another. Given all the computer is doing is moving and adding 0’s and 1’s, then the energy used is none (since all the energy used by storing a 1 will dissipate when it converts to a 0 anyway). So what is happening to all this electrical energy that my computer is consuming? Simple - it is being converted into sound (electrical hum and fan noise) and heat. A lot of heat - hence the need for all the cooling fans.
But hang on - where did things go wrong? After all, a laptop doesn’t need anywhere near that much power (or your battery wouldn’t last long enough to get past the POST screen!) and certainly doesn’t require fans to the extent that it’s drives feel like they are living in a wind tunnel. Yet these miniaturised systems can perform just as well as their bigger desktop brothers, with, in essence, the same components inside them. They also have the added disadvantage that since the majority of the contents are not fresh air, then something must be radically different.
In my opinion, just as software has got sloppy in its design, so as the hardware it runs on. I remember reading an article many moons ago that claimed that the increase in heat was due to the fact the chip manufacturers were using finer and finer tracks (”wires” to those not in the know) in order to cram more and more into them. Yet doesn’t the fact that a laptop is miniaturised even more dispel this theory?
As much as I despise all of the people that ram the global warming arguments down our throats, I would love their pressure to make computer component manufacturers to take a good look at their products, and start to come up with ways to make them run more efficiently. It would make a refreshing change to go into the local electrical store and be able to buy a PC with an energy efficiency rating, much as you can with other electrical products.
Perhaps when that day comes, we can look forward to ditching the mass of fans, the huge power supplies, and the spiralling electricity bill.
And maybe then I can listen to my mp3's without the constant steady hum of half a dozen fans in the background.
Back in the midsts of time, as these words were scrolling up cinema screens across the world, boffins were working hard on creating machines - vastly complex technological feats of the modern age, that had the staggering ability to add 1 and 1 together (and, with alarming reliabily, get the answer 2 - or 10 in binary - every time).
These fantastic creations could take strings of 0’s and 1’s, and perform staggering tasks with them (so long as each staggering task could be broken down sufficiently to adding 0 and 0, 1 and 0, or 1 and 1).
Standards were established to make life easier (like ASCII), and suddenly these strings of binary digits could be manipulated to form text - then, by virtue of 0’s and 1’s in precisely the right timing, these letters could be displayed on a screen.
To actually achieve anything useful, careful planning was required to make machines that could work through millions of digits a second, and suddenly, the age of the home computer was upon us.
Skip forwards to today. We now enjoy machines with the uncanny ability to do precisely the same thing (ie add 1 and 1 and get 10), but to perform the task at a speed that makes the early home computers look like nothing more than an abacus. However, the basic task being performed is identical.
I remember receiving my first computer for Christmas 1982. It was a 16K Sinclair Spectrum, which was where my adoration of Sinclair design and products all began. It was a modern marvel, with colour, graphics, sound (of a fashion!) and had amazing processing power, with ample memory for most tasks. In the box was the computer, the manuals (back when the manuals were actually filled with useful information), the Horizons starter tape, tape leads, and a 9V transformer. All of this processing power could get all the electricity it required from a single small PSU. There were no hulking heatsinks and no noisy fans - this small black box provided all the power needed.
Skip forwards, once again, to today. I am sitting in front of an very average PC with regards to power - it’s an Athlon 3000 complete with a gig of ram, a couple of hard drives, and other assorted gubbins. The case contains no less than 6 fans all in (3 case fans, a PSU fan, a CPU fan and a GPU fan) all whirring away. And making noise. And using electricity.
The PSU is a 500W affair - a far cry from the 7.2W transformer that the original speccy required. While this does give me room to manouevre on the power front, I feel sure that my system would eat a 300W supply for breakfast.
Now then - basic laws of physics - energy cannot be created or destroyed - only converted from one form to another. Given all the computer is doing is moving and adding 0’s and 1’s, then the energy used is none (since all the energy used by storing a 1 will dissipate when it converts to a 0 anyway). So what is happening to all this electrical energy that my computer is consuming? Simple - it is being converted into sound (electrical hum and fan noise) and heat. A lot of heat - hence the need for all the cooling fans.
But hang on - where did things go wrong? After all, a laptop doesn’t need anywhere near that much power (or your battery wouldn’t last long enough to get past the POST screen!) and certainly doesn’t require fans to the extent that it’s drives feel like they are living in a wind tunnel. Yet these miniaturised systems can perform just as well as their bigger desktop brothers, with, in essence, the same components inside them. They also have the added disadvantage that since the majority of the contents are not fresh air, then something must be radically different.
In my opinion, just as software has got sloppy in its design, so as the hardware it runs on. I remember reading an article many moons ago that claimed that the increase in heat was due to the fact the chip manufacturers were using finer and finer tracks (”wires” to those not in the know) in order to cram more and more into them. Yet doesn’t the fact that a laptop is miniaturised even more dispel this theory?
As much as I despise all of the people that ram the global warming arguments down our throats, I would love their pressure to make computer component manufacturers to take a good look at their products, and start to come up with ways to make them run more efficiently. It would make a refreshing change to go into the local electrical store and be able to buy a PC with an energy efficiency rating, much as you can with other electrical products.
Perhaps when that day comes, we can look forward to ditching the mass of fans, the huge power supplies, and the spiralling electricity bill.
And maybe then I can listen to my mp3's without the constant steady hum of half a dozen fans in the background.
) and any light sources, then the computer is merely taking electrical energy and rearranging it. A perfect system should be able to do this with no heat loss or electrical hum, and give an overall electrical usage of practically zero (however, there is no such thing as a perfect system, even when using super conductors.)