← The energy-first turn · The Energy Lab
How a measurement standard is designed, shown in full.
Two working drafts, published so they can be read as engineering rather than announced as products: a way of recording energy claims so they cannot be laundered, and a portability layer so one program runs on several kinds of physics. They are worth studying whatever you think of the thesis, because the design problems are general. How do you write a rule that survives someone trying to game it? What does a specification have to refuse in order to be useful? Both are CC0, which is itself part of the argument.
Provenance has to be a field, not a footnote.
OER/1 records how a number was obtained alongside the number. Read §3.2 and ask what would break if that field were optional.
A composition rule is where a standard earns its keep.
Composing receipts sums the joules but takes the weakest provenance, never the average. That single rule is what stops a simulation inheriting a measurement's credibility.
Anti-gaming clauses tell you what the authors feared.
Both specs carry them. They are the most informative sections in any standard, because they enumerate the abuses the designers expected.
Anti-goals are as load-bearing as goals.
RELAX/1 §8 states what the dialect deliberately will not do. A specification that promises everything constrains nothing.
OER/1 and DRIFT/1
A receipt that records how an energy figure was obtained, not merely what it was, with a composition rule that takes the weakest provenance rather than the average. Plus a benchmark protocol for systems that adapt while running.
RELAX/1
Ten operations with a reference lowering, so one relaxation program can execute on thermodynamic, Ising, neuromorphic, photonic, in-memory or ordinary GPU hardware and have its receipts compose honestly across them.
Every claim traces to something.
Shown in full so the citation practice can be inspected rather than promised. The review carries no figure without a source row. Where a number is a company's own statement it is recorded as self-published; where it is a letter of intent it is not promoted to an award. This is the ledger the map is built on.
| Topic | Source | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Extropic Z1 / TSU | Company + press coverage (2025-26) | https://extropic.ai |
| Extropic $75M Commerce LOI | Press coverage, Jul 2026 | (multiple outlets; verify against Commerce announcement) |
| Normal Computing CN101 | Company announcement, 2025 | https://normalcomputing.com |
| Denoising Thermodynamic Models | npj Unconventional Computing, 2026 | nature.com (s44335) |
| MTJ probabilistic Ising machine | Nature Communications, 2026 | nature.com |
| OIM as samplers | Communications Physics, Feb 2026 | nature.com |
| Darwin Monkey / Wukong | Global Times / SCMP / People's Daily, Aug 2025 | globaltimes.cn/page/202508/1339961.shtml |
| PKU-CAS memristor brain-modeling chip | Science (Jul 2026) + SCMP coverage | scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3359408 |
| Taichi photonic chiplet | Science 384, 202-209 (2024) | science.org |
| LightGen photonic generator | Science (Dec 2025) + SCMP coverage | scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3336918 |
| Wuxi photonic pilot fab / Shanghai optical lab | Industry press, 2025-26 | (all-about-industries.com and Chinese state media) |
| Toshiba SBM arbitrage & 2026 autonomous-systems positioning | IEEE Spectrum (2020); Toshiba IISM slides (May 2026) | global.toshiba (sbm PDFs) |
| Samsung + SK hynix LPDDR6-PIM | eeNews / TweakTown / Business Korea, 2024-26 | eenewseurope.com |
| SK hynix CES 2026 PIM/AiMX/CuD | SK hynix newsroom, Jan 2026 | news.skhynix.com |
| IEA data-center electricity | IEA 'Energy and AI' report, Apr 2025 | iea.org |
| Energy-Based Transformers | Gladstone et al., arXiv:2507.02092 (2025) | arxiv.org/abs/2507.02092 |
| AXIOM vs DreamerV3 | VERSES press + AXIOM technical blog (2025) | verses.ai |
| Titans | Behrouz et al., arXiv:2501.00663 | arxiv.org |
| TTT layers | Sun et al., 2024 | arxiv.org |
| Gated DeltaNet | Yang et al., arXiv:2412.06464 | arxiv.org |
| BitNet b1.58 | Microsoft Research (2024-25) | arxiv.org / huggingface.co/microsoft |
| Equilibrium Propagation | Scellier & Bengio (2017) + successors | arxiv.org |
| Physical self-learning networks | Dillavou et al. (UPenn), 2022-24 | arxiv.org / PNAS |
| Klere EPU / settling fabric / joule stack | klere.ai (self-published, CC0) | https://klere.ai (+ /proof /stack /energy /compute) |
| EFA whitepaper + validation ledger | Charlot Lab, IPAI @ BMI (2026) | https://efa.physicalai-bmi.org ; github.com/dcharlot-physicalai-bmi/efa |
| Institute for Physical AI @ BMI | physicalai-bmi.org | https://physicalai-bmi.org |
| Gartner DC electricity & capacity 2026 | Gartner press release, Jun 10 2026 | gartner.com/en/newsroom (565 TWh 2026; 132->290 GW) |
| US DC power & shortfall | Goldman Sachs Research, May 2026 | goldmansachs.com/insights (31->66 GW; 9.3->45 GW shortfall) |
| IEA 2026 update | IEA 'Key Questions on Energy and AI', Apr 2026 | iea.org (485 TWh 2025; AI DCs +50% YoY) |
| Hyperscaler capex 2026 | FT-compiled guidance via Axis Intelligence, Jun 2026 | axis-intelligence.com ($725B, +77%) |
| Energy per query / test-time scaling | arXiv:2509.20241 | arxiv.org/abs/2509.20241 (0.31 Wh median; 3.91 Wh long queries) |
| Unconventional AI $475M seed | DCD / Bloomberg, Dec 2025-Jun 2026 | datacenterdynamics.com (a16z, Lightspeed, Bezos; $4.5B val) |
| Neurophos $110M Series A | PRNewswire / Photonics Spectra, Jan 2026 | prnewswire.com (Gates Frontier, M12) |
| OLIX $220M | SiliconANGLE / FT, Feb 2026 | siliconangle.com (Hummingbird; >$1B val) |
| Signaloid UxHw commercial | EE Times, Jul 2026 | eetimes.com (Boeing, CERN; TSMC ASIC May 2026) |
| GlobalFoundries $300M CHIPS LOI | GF press / Quantum Insider, Jul 29 2026 | thequantuminsider.com |
| Thermodynamic computing mainstream | Quanta Magazine, Jul 15 2026 | quantamagazine.org |
| UK Neuroware IKC | UCL news, Sep-Oct 2025 | ucl.ac.uk/news (GBP 12.8M EPSRC + Innovate UK) |
| UK neuromorphic centre | UKRI / Strathclyde / Aston, 2025-26 | ukri.org (GBP 4.48M) |
| EU AI Act energy documentation | White & Case / Latham & Watkins analyses (2025-26) | whitecase.com; lw.com (Art. 53, Annex XI; Model Documentation Form) |
| AI energy label consultation | Nemko Digital / EU consultation coverage (Apr 2026) | digital.nemko.com |
| SCI for AI methodology | Green Software Foundation (ISO/IEC 21031:2024) | greensoftware.foundation/policy/research/sci-ai-eu-ai-act |
| Untether AI shutdown | zach.be analysis (Jun 2025) | zach.be/p/why-did-untether-ai-fail |
| Graphcore arc | Turing Post 2026 update; Companies House filings via DCD/Register | turingpost.com; datacenterdynamics.com |
| Extropic Z1 detail + LOI scope | extropic.ai/hardware; extropic.ai/writing (Jul 2026) | extropic.ai (250k p-bits/chip; Z1 clusters + generative-AI benchmark demos under LOI) |
| Qualcomm acquires Modular ($3.9B) | EE Times / NAND Research / press, Jun-Jul 2026 | indexbox.io; nand-research.com; modular.com |
| ZLUDA v6 status | Phoronix; vosen.github.io blog, Jan-Jun 2026 | phoronix.com; vosen.github.io/ZLUDA |
| Huawei CANN open-sourcing + torch_npu | Bruegel 'Stack battles' (Jun 2026); TechPowerUp (Aug 2025) | bruegel.org; techpowerup.com |
| DeepSeek day-one domestic-chip support | Tom's Hardware (Sep 2025; Jan 2026) | tomshardware.com |
| Alibaba open-source AI stack vs CUDA | ChinaTechNews, Jul 2026 | chinatechnews.com |
| Atlas 950 SuperPoD global debut | TechRadar Pro, MWC 2026 | techradar.com |
| AMI Labs $1.03B seed | TechCrunch / Crunchbase / eWeek, Mar 2026 | techcrunch.com (Europe's largest seed; $3.5B pre-money) |
| LeJEPA identifiability proof | arXiv preprints via TechTimes, May 2026 | (linear identifiability under stated conditions) |
| Gulf sovereign AI buildout | AGSI; CNBC; vision2030.ai tracker; Middle East AI News (2025-26) | agsi.org; cnbc.com (HUMAIN 2,200 MW; Stargate UAE; 35k GB300 approvals each) |
| India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 | ISM.gov.in; Open Magazine; NAMTECH (Jul 2026) | ism.gov.in (Semicon 2.0 cabinet approval Jul 15, 2026) |
| MLPerf Power methodology | MLCommons / IEEE HPCA 2025; arXiv:2410.12032 | mlcommons.org (1,841 measurements, 60 systems) |
| Hardware lottery | Sara Hooker, CACM (2021) | arxiv.org/abs/2009.06489 |
| Mortal computation | Hinton, 'The Forward-Forward Algorithm' + talks (2022-23) | arxiv.org |
58 sources · compiled August 2026 · coverage skews toward English-language and Chinese state-media-covered efforts