California Energy Commission (CEC), the body tasked with keeping the US state of California both energy-rich and energy-efficient, is preparing a new series of regulations aimed at reducing power-draw of computers and the overall consumption of PC monitors. These regulations could have a profound effect on the PC industry at large, as California-based tech companies create industry standards. The regulations could come into force at various stages, between 2017 and 2021.

The CEC is said to have conducted wide-ranging consultations with stakeholders in the industry, to formulate regulations that make certain kinds of computers energy-efficient, while not creating the kind of regulation that prevent certain other kind of computers from being sold altogether (eg: gaming desktops and workstations). For example, it's realistic to sell a desktop PC for Internet and office productivity apps that draws under 100W, but it's not realistic to make one for 4K Ultra HD gaming, or even industrial CAD. These kinds of computers will be governed by a separate set of rules, and as you'll find out, some of these rules are very arbitrary, and not very well thought out.To begin with, CEC hopes to make computers more energy-efficient by setting idle power consumption targets for manufacturers to design their desktops to meet. The average Joe's office desktop should have no problems meeting those targets, as the technology needed to drive such applications has already approached such level of efficiency. Gaming PCs and workstations, on the other hand, will be given exemptions on the basis of an "expandability score." This is built around the idea that some users need machines that are expandable to meet their growing computational needs (think a video production firm that needs to change components in its workstations as it's moving from 4K to 5K video editing).

This "expandability score" is determined by a number of factors, most importantly, the features of specific hardware components. The higher your product's expandability score, the more "maximum idle power draw" it's allowed to have. Logically, something like this shouldn't affect DIY PC enthusiasts (people who assemble their own gaming PCs or workstations by purchasing components separately), since the resulting build is not technically a product, but an assemblage of products. This should, however, affect pre-built gaming desktop/workstation manufacturers.

One of the interesting specs on the basis of which a gaming desktop will be granted a "high" expandability score is the memory bandwidth of installed graphics cards. The draft regulations prescribe a graphics card with at least 400 GB/s will qualify for high-expandability exemptions in the year 2018. The regulators are aware the technology moves forward, and so does memory bandwidth, and so they set this minimum bandwidth requirement to 600 GB/s by 2020. This, in our opinion, is highly arbitrary. Today's high-end graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 1080, only feature 320 GB/s, and it's expected that by 2018, mid-range GPUs will have the kind of processing power (and importantly memory bandwidth) of the GTX 1080. So you'll see mid-range GPUs with wastefully expensive memory to meet those bandwidth requirements. High-end GPUs will have moved on to faster memory standards such as GDDR6 and HBM2.

What adds to memory bandwidth being an arbitrary criterion is that both AMD and NVIDIA have innovated lossless memory compression tech that make the most out of low physical bandwidth. This is the same as air-pollution regulators using engine displacement to set regulations for cars, when technologies exist to make the most out of limited displacement (eg: variable valve-timing, turbochargers, etc.)

PSUs are the other key component of the regulations. To get a high-expandability score, the machine should also feature a PSU with a minimum capacity of 600W, workstations should feature PSUs with at least 80 Plus Gold switching efficiency. Lastly, a key target component of the regulations are monitors. On most desktops, monitors are the most power-hungry components. The commission is prescribing new standards for display manufacturers, to use the latest energy-efficient LEDs (for illumination), setting a new default brightness standard (since most consumers never change their monitor brightness); ambient-light sensors that dynamically adjusts brightness to the surroundings; new display signal technology that reduces power-draw by monitor electronics by clock-gating if the input frames are successively repetitive, and switching-efficiency standards for the monitor's internal power-supply.

The jury is out on whether these regulations increase costs for end-users in exchange for more efficient tech, but then that's the classic reaction to regulation meeting any industry.