I think that it is very odd, verging on category error, to talk of power consumption and flops in the same breath. Flops needed is purely a function of the algorithm, while power consumption is a joint measure of the software and hardware. Power decomposes into energy per operation and operations per second, a fairly neat division into hardware and software. We expect power consumption to fall in a smooth manner, while we expect software efficiency to decline discontinuously, if at all.
I think that it is very odd, verging on category error, to talk of power consumption and flops in the same breath. Flops needed is purely a function of the algorithm, while power consumption is a joint measure of the software and hardware. Power decomposes into energy per operation and operations per second, a fairly neat division into hardware and software. We expect power consumption to fall in a smooth manner, while we expect software efficiency to decline discontinuously, if at all.