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The Vacuum Tube's Power Law [pdf] (vaclavsmil.com)
45 points by SongofEarth on Oct 16, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



I find it modestly interesting that he is comparing power density (of tubes) to transistors per unit area (moors postulate, its not a law)... I think it could be worth noting the Dennard scaling here, in that the power density of transistors (chip wide) is remaining nearly constant due to us lowering the Vdd of the transistor on every generation of reducing the channel width.

So, the tubes got much more powerful, the transistors are getting more numerous, but at the same time using less and less power each.


There is also Koomey's Law https://rhombus-tech.net/whitepapers/ecocomputing_07sep2015/

If I had a master's thesis, it'd be that the increased system requirements of bloated software upgrades prevents Koomey's law from allowing solar powered smartphones and laptops: https://hackaday.io/project/177716-the-libre-autarkic-laptop Working prototype (not mine) : https://www.freethegameboy.info/


Extrapolating from this chart, Spinal Tap's amplifiers which went "up to 11" in 1984 would now be approximately seven orders of magnitude more powerful. Ear protection is advised.


I design tube guitar amplifiers.

(1) excellent reference

(2) that was a 100 watt JCM800 Marshall in the scene. 7 orders of magnitude increase means the amp’s output transformer would look something like this[0] which is pretty rad

[0] https://www.westrafo.com/15-gw-of-transformer-power-shipped-...


Given recent supply constraints, what tubes are you using for your amps?


JJ electronics. Their factory is in Slovenia. Thankfully I did a large buy before prices went up.



Vaclav Smil is a great scientist




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