Looking at the code I am reminded of how grateful I am for high level languages and the absolutely insane number of libraries I can use to do perform so many complex yet fundamental tasks at ease without writing code for them.
This calculation makes me curious, as I know very little about computer engineering/hardware but want to learn: what is the current-most energy-efficient general CPU architecture/core in performance-per-watt? Some high-speed ARM? A Y-series x86?
This number seems quite optimistic to me (I've found it on wikipedia). It just happens I was coding for fun in assembly language on Apple II some weeks ago and the minimum opcode length is two cpu cycles, so I'd say at best we're at 0.5 mips (the apple is 1 Mhz). And for anything useful it'd be closer to 0.25 mips).
Ultra-low-power 8-bit microcontrollers? 1 MIPS @ 1 W is possible on a AVR I believe, but still much less efficient than a modern CPU. Economic-of-scale at work, you can't compete with greater integration.
Generally you don't ship FPGAs in consumer devices you plan to sell in high quantities, as they're very expensive in addition to not being very efficient. Small FPGAs or CPLDs can be used for low-volume devices to avoid the huge non-recoupable expenses of an ASIC spin -- because of the specific requirements of the application.
They're almost exclusively used for prototyping ASICs.
I guess I have some mood issues this morning, but the first (and about the only) thought that came to my mind is basically frustration about how pointlessly we spend energy that comes from burning something as precious as oil and how it increases the entropy and ultimately leads to heat death of the universe...
So sorry for your mood, I feel you. Hope it improves.
About entropy and heat death. Let me offer an alternative story.
Imagine heat death as a universe-wide network of "points", all oscillating the tiniest bit possible. Imagine also that this is the maximum size the universe could expand to. Now, at this point, if there was any, even a tiny small contraction of the universe, it would start a full on contraction/heating up process. Maybe you can call that the anti-BigBang. And if that happens, there would be an infinite loop between the BigBang and the BigCrunch. Life would probably come back at some point and heat death wouldn't be such a bad thing after all ;)
Hope you enjoyed that story. Would love to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you.
At current difficulty, 2 hashes/second gives about 614 trillion years to find one block. Not quite the heat death of the universe, but wikipedia says all stars in the universe will have exhausted their fuel.
