We introduce the notion of energy scalable computation on general purpose processors. The principle idea is to maximize computational quality for a given energy constraint. The desirable energyquality behavior of algorithms is discussed. Subsequently the energy-quality scalability of three distinct categories of commonly used signal processing algorithms (viz. filtering, frequency domain transforms and classification) are analyzed on the StrongARM SA1100 processor and transformations are described which obtain significant improvements in the energy-quality scalability of the algorithm.