Computer Laws

           Computer Laws

 

          Moore’s Law: Computer hardware doubles in speed and capacity every 18 months.

 

Gates’s Law: Computer software doubles in languor and bloat every 18 months.

 

The Cyber-Siesta: Computer boot-up time remains a constant 60 seconds over many computer generations. Show me a petaflop machine, and I will show you a machine that must do 60 quadrillion floating-point operations to turn on.

 

          Hellerstein’s Limit:  If you keep your computer loaded with the very latest software, then over its lifetime it will do at most twice as much work as it did in the first 18 months.

          Proof: 1 + ½ + ¼ + 1/8 + 1/16 + …  =  2

 

          The Digital 90-10: Analog systems are 90% useful 100% of the time; but digital systems are 100% useful 90% of the time, and 100% useless 10% of the time.