Computer Power Consumption

Varyon · 03-07-2016, 01:43 PM

Recent threads about 4e vehicle design have caused me to revisit a partially-completed project - combining the old 3e Vehicles with the new Spaceships line. One aspect of this involves accounting for all power production/consumption in terms of kW (or, rather kW per ton of vehicle weight), and I've run into a snag related to computers. Namely, I need to figure out an appropriate kW/ton figure for their power consumption. At a first glance, assuming UT Power Cells are approximately comparable to the Power Cells I've worked out from Vehicles, I'm getting a TL 9 personal computer using up 100 W. TL 10 would use 150 W, TL 11 300 W, TL 12 500 W. Extrapolating down from that would give a TL 8 personal computer using up something like 70 W - a bit on the high side, but probably within error. High Tech has a comparable computer, this time assuming the M battery is an advanced TL 8 battery, burning up around 56 W, so this seems feasible.

If we assume no change in efficiency from scaling up or down, that's around 15 W/lb at TL 8, 20 W/lb at TL 9, and so forth. Does this seem feasible? For reference, the computer networks I'm using for my Vehicles/Spaceships mix are assumed to be Hardened (for 2x weight), so this works out to 1.5 kW/ton, 2 kW/ton, and so forth (again, noting that the tonnage is for the weight of the entire vehicle, with the computer network being only 5% of this value) for a Computer Network system - a single Solar Panel system is enough to power such a network, and you'll still have some power left over (Solar Cell provides 2 kW/ton at TL 8).

~~Peter Knutsen~~ · 03-07-2016, 08:51 PM

Keep in mind, TL8 starts at 1980 and continues until at least 2025 and probably quite a bit longer. As far as I know, 70 watt isn't a lot compared to a present day desktop computer with a powerful CPU and a bunch of RAM and an SSD or rarely two, and if you go back just a few years, CPU were a lot more power-hungry (because with laptops less widespread, and smartphones and tables not having happened yet, there was less incentive to make power-efficient ones - I don't know how much power my Pentium IV CPU used but it was terribly noisy) and computers had spinning hard drives instead of SSDs, and often multiple such hard drives.

panton41 · 03-07-2016, 10:34 PM

I think the real problem is that Spaceships is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Vehicles. They have a same author and vaguely the same goals, but the numbers in Spaceships are wildly inconsistent even within the same chart while Vehicles attempts to have some kind of internal consistency even if the exact numbers are gaming approximations. Add in that 4th Edition has been deliberately vague about exactly how much various power cells and batteries can hold you're mostly going down the path of madness trying to unify the lines.

Flyndaran · 03-07-2016, 10:38 PM

In 4th edition, authors aren't allowed to be consistent with certain things like power, energy, data, etc. except behind the scenes for their products alone.

panton41 · 03-07-2016, 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

In 4th edition, authors aren't allowed to be consistent with certain things like power, energy, data, etc. except behind the scenes for their products alone.

It doesn't help that, for example, from 1980 to the present (TL8) we've seen removable data storage technology go from about 160kb for a 5.25" floppy to 128GB on a fingernail-sized MicroSD card.

Varyon · 03-08-2016, 09:09 AM

I'm aware there's a massive range in computer performance between the start and end of TL 8, I'm just looking to see if the 70 W figure (or, rather, the 15 W/lb value) is in the right ballpark, and if the TL scaling looks about right.

As for my conversion project, my methodology is primarily taking the Vehicles rules and turning them into something that can be used with the Spaceships framework, as I prefer working with the latter but prefer the options (and realism) of the former. Rather than building a Fuel Cell, as in Vehicles (alright, I need n kW, so let me plug that into this equation and adjust for TL and, there, it weighs x lb and takes up y cf...), you just slap on a Fuel Cell system (taking up 1/20th the mass and volume of your ship) and note that it produces 10 kW/ton (assuming TL 8). The kW/ton nomenclature is another part of this - it's functionally equivalent to the old PP system for Spaceships, but using real numbers.

EDIT: I'm also curious as to what sort of power increase would be appropriate for the various +/- Complexity modifiers available. A CF modifier for designs with higher/lower power consumption (but the same stats otherwise) would also be useful.

EDIT2: Also, if anyone's still looking at this thread and is curious, there really isn't any proper conversion between PP and kW/ton. It ranges anywhere from 1:1 for TL 7 Solar Panels to 1:1000 for TL 12^ Total Conversion Reactors. Yeah.

03-07-2016, 01:43 PM	#1
Varyon Join Date: Jun 2013	Computer Power Consumption Recent threads about 4e vehicle design have caused me to revisit a partially-completed project - combining the old 3e Vehicles with the new Spaceships line. One aspect of this involves accounting for all power production/consumption in terms of kW (or, rather kW per ton of vehicle weight), and I've run into a snag related to computers. Namely, I need to figure out an appropriate kW/ton figure for their power consumption. At a first glance, assuming UT Power Cells are approximately comparable to the Power Cells I've worked out from Vehicles, I'm getting a TL 9 personal computer using up 100 W. TL 10 would use 150 W, TL 11 300 W, TL 12 500 W. Extrapolating down from that would give a TL 8 personal computer using up something like 70 W - a bit on the high side, but probably within error. High Tech has a comparable computer, this time assuming the M battery is an advanced TL 8 battery, burning up around 56 W, so this seems feasible. If we assume no change in efficiency from scaling up or down, that's around 15 W/lb at TL 8, 20 W/lb at TL 9, and so forth. Does this seem feasible? For reference, the computer networks I'm using for my Vehicles/Spaceships mix are assumed to be Hardened (for 2x weight), so this works out to 1.5 kW/ton, 2 kW/ton, and so forth (again, noting that the tonnage is for the weight of the entire vehicle, with the computer network being only 5% of this value) for a Computer Network system - a single Solar Panel system is enough to power such a network, and you'll still have some power left over (Solar Cell provides 2 kW/ton at TL 8).

03-07-2016, 08:51 PM	#2
~~Peter Knutsen~~ Banned Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Europe	Re: Computer Power Consumption Keep in mind, TL8 starts at 1980 and continues until at least 2025 and probably quite a bit longer. As far as I know, 70 watt isn't a lot compared to a present day desktop computer with a powerful CPU and a bunch of RAM and an SSD or rarely two, and if you go back just a few years, CPU were a lot more power-hungry (because with laptops less widespread, and smartphones and tables not having happened yet, there was less incentive to make power-efficient ones - I don't know how much power my Pentium IV CPU used but it was terribly noisy) and computers had spinning hard drives instead of SSDs, and often multiple such hard drives.

03-07-2016, 10:38 PM	#4
Flyndaran Untagged Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon	Re: Computer Power Consumption In 4th edition, authors aren't allowed to be consistent with certain things like power, energy, data, etc. except behind the scenes for their products alone. __________________ Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check.

03-08-2016, 09:09 AM	#6
Varyon Join Date: Jun 2013	Re: Computer Power Consumption I'm aware there's a massive range in computer performance between the start and end of TL 8, I'm just looking to see if the 70 W figure (or, rather, the 15 W/lb value) is in the right ballpark, and if the TL scaling looks about right. As for my conversion project, my methodology is primarily taking the Vehicles rules and turning them into something that can be used with the Spaceships framework, as I prefer working with the latter but prefer the options (and realism) of the former. Rather than building a Fuel Cell, as in Vehicles (alright, I need n kW, so let me plug that into this equation and adjust for TL and, there, it weighs x lb and takes up y cf...), you just slap on a Fuel Cell system (taking up 1/20th the mass and volume of your ship) and note that it produces 10 kW/ton (assuming TL 8). The kW/ton nomenclature is another part of this - it's functionally equivalent to the old PP system for Spaceships, but using real numbers. EDIT: I'm also curious as to what sort of power increase would be appropriate for the various +/- Complexity modifiers available. A CF modifier for designs with higher/lower power consumption (but the same stats otherwise) would also be useful. EDIT2: Also, if anyone's still looking at this thread and is curious, there really isn't any proper conversion between PP and kW/ton. It ranges anywhere from 1:1 for TL 7 Solar Panels to 1:1000 for TL 12^ Total Conversion Reactors. Yeah. Last edited by Varyon; 03-10-2016 at 11:19 AM.