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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: lots of juice, Short Vectors Versus Long Vectors
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2024 23:08:21 -0000 (UTC)
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On Sat, 27 Apr 2024 11:48:03 -0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:

> If people make the claim that GPUs are more power-efficient than CPUs,
> yes, they are for equal performance (if they can be programmed
> efficiently enough for the application at hand).  In practice, this will
> not be used for energy savings, but for doing more calculations.

“Rebound effect”, I think it’s called.

Remember all those science-fiction predictions from the earlier part of 
the 20th century, about cities on the Moon, personal flying transportation 
and all the rest of it? All that was predicated on having large sources of 
power--i.e. atomic power.

Instead of having atomic-scale sources of power at our disposal, we got 
information processing (computers) instead, and almost nobody saw how big 
a revolution that would be. Meanwhile, the atomic-energy industry seemed 
to take a wrong turn, putting more effort into power production systems 
that would also aid the production of atomic weapons, instead of 
concentrating on predominantly peaceful technologies.

Now the information processing power is reaching the limits of the 
available physical power. The only way to make significant further 
progress is to start boosting that physical power generation again.

> Same thing happend with steam engines - Watt's engines were a huge
> improvement in fuel efficiency over the previous Newcomen models, which
> led to much more steam engines being built.

Watt’s engine (like Newcomen’s one before it) was an “atmospheric” engine: 
the pressure to drive it came from the atmosphere, not from the steam.

True high-pressure “steam” engines were developed by Trevithick and 
others, after Watt’s patent had expired and he could no longer stop them.

And that is what kicked off the Industrial Revolution.