CPU Power Usage Regulation

Who says that government can not do good. Back in the 70s the government made targets for car mileage and this resulted in tangible improvements in fuel economy and reduced the environmental impact by millions if not billions of tons of CO2.

So if the government can regulate fuel economy, why can't it regulate CPU or computer platform TDP? And unlike the situation with cars there are only a handful of high end CPU players out there: AMD, Intel, IBM, and SUN. This should somewhat be easy, and can be done in a reasonable manner assuming there is political will.

Previously I suggested that CPU manufacturers, voluntarily reduce the max TDP over time. But now I think that a little push by the government might go a long way towards kick starting things.

A hypothetical time line for quad core CPUs might go something like this:

*2010, max TDP==> 120 W
*2012, max TDP==> 110 W
*2014, max TDP==> 100 W

Similarly for dual core CPUs:

*2010, max TDP==>55 W
*2012 max TDP==>45 W

And so on.

In order not to hurt CPU companies so much, the government might decide to regulate certain market segments and not others. For example, consumer CPUs, but not servers.

Another way would be for government to impose extra taxes on energy inefficient CPUs. Alternatively it could give tax breaks/tax credit for energy efficient CPUs; Individual states can increase sales tax on computer costing more than 800$.

This same kind of logic can also be applied to GPUs, chipsets and other computer components like hard drives memory, and power supplies.

For GPUs the break down would not be in the number of cores but based on market segment. For example:

*Enthusiast==> 150 W
*Performance==> 110 W
*Mainstream==>75 W
*Entry level ==> 45 W

And these numbers would be reduced by 10 watts every two years, similar to what I proposed for CPUs.