Koomey's law
E232505
Koomey's law is an empirical observation that the energy efficiency of computing—measured as computations per unit of energy—has historically doubled roughly every 1.5 years.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Koomey's law canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T2088719 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Koomey's law Context triple: [Moore's law, relatedConcept, Koomey's law]
-
A.
Wirth’s law
Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
-
B.
Moore's law
Moore's law is an observation and prediction that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit—and thus computing power—tends to roughly double at regular intervals, driving exponential growth in digital technology.
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C.
Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a proposed sound law in Proto-Germanic historical linguistics that explains the development of certain geminate consonants from earlier consonant clusters.
-
D.
Linus’s Law
Linus’s Law is the open-source software development principle that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” emphasizing the power of many reviewers to quickly find and fix defects.
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E.
Brooks's law
Brooks's law is the software engineering principle stating that adding manpower to a late software project makes it later, highlighting the communication and coordination overhead of large teams.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Koomey's law Target entity description: Koomey's law is an empirical observation that the energy efficiency of computing—measured as computations per unit of energy—has historically doubled roughly every 1.5 years.
-
A.
Wirth’s law
Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
-
B.
Moore's law
Moore's law is an observation and prediction that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit—and thus computing power—tends to roughly double at regular intervals, driving exponential growth in digital technology.
-
C.
Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a proposed sound law in Proto-Germanic historical linguistics that explains the development of certain geminate consonants from earlier consonant clusters.
-
D.
Linus’s Law
Linus’s Law is the open-source software development principle that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” emphasizing the power of many reviewers to quickly find and fix defects.
-
E.
Brooks's law
Brooks's law is the software engineering principle stating that adding manpower to a late software project makes it later, highlighting the communication and coordination overhead of large teams.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (40)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
empirical observation
ⓘ
law of computing ⓘ trend in computing ⓘ |
| appliesTo |
digital computing
ⓘ
general-purpose computing hardware ⓘ microprocessors ⓘ |
| assumes | continuation of historical technological progress in computing ⓘ |
| basedOn | historical measurements of computations per kilowatt-hour ⓘ |
| category |
computing performance trends
ⓘ
energy laws in information technology ⓘ laws named after people ⓘ |
| concerns | energy consumption of computation ⓘ |
| describes |
computations per unit of energy
ⓘ
energy efficiency of computing ⓘ historical improvement in computing energy efficiency ⓘ |
| field |
computer science
ⓘ
energy efficiency ⓘ information technology ⓘ |
| growthType | exponential ⓘ |
| hasUncertainty | rate of improvement may slow over time ⓘ |
| influences | expectations about future computing energy use ⓘ |
| isAbout | improvement in energy efficiency of information processing ⓘ |
| mainClaim |
computations per unit of energy double roughly every 1.5 years
ⓘ
energy efficiency of computing doubles at a regular exponential rate ⓘ |
| metric |
computations per joule
ⓘ
computations per kilowatt-hour ⓘ |
| namedAfter | Jonathan Koomey ⓘ |
| proposedBy | Jonathan Koomey ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 2011 ⓘ |
| relatedTo |
Dennard scaling
ⓘ
Landauer's principle ⓘ Moore's law ⓘ |
| scope | historical trend from mid-20th century onward ⓘ |
| status | empirical regularity ⓘ |
| subjectOf |
research on data center energy use
ⓘ
studies of computing sustainability ⓘ |
| timeConstant | 1.5 years ⓘ |
| usedIn |
energy policy analysis for ICT
ⓘ
projections of data center energy demand ⓘ technology forecasting ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Koomey's law Description of subject: Koomey's law is an empirical observation that the energy efficiency of computing—measured as computations per unit of energy—has historically doubled roughly every 1.5 years.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.