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Boosting Battery Life For RISC Processors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the staying-unplugged-longer dept.

prostoalex writes "National Semiconductor and ARM Holdings will jointly develop the power management solution for RISC chips, that they estimate will improve battery life by 25-400%. The target date of the first sample product is Q2 2003." My old Tadpole laptop sure could have used this. I counted myself as lucky when I got a whole 45 minutes out of a battery.

9 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Ugh. by archeopterix · · Score: 4, Funny
    Here's the marketspeak-filtered cache, in case it gets slashdotted:
    We are developing technology to optimize battery use in portable devices.
  2. Obligatory Simpsons Quote by VTg33k · · Score: 3, Funny

    "...that they estimate will improve battery life by 25-400%."

    "Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that."
    -- Homer Simpson

  3. Merits of RISC by EggplantMan · · Score: 3, Funny

    I always thought RISC was inferior, that's why it lost out to CISC and went the way of the dodo. Who wants a reduced instruction set anyways? That's why it always lagged in the floating point benchmarks. I look forward to the day when our CISC processors are even better equipped - with an instruction for every conceivable operation.

    --

    ?-|||-----x<*))))><
    1. Re:Merits of RISC by dcoetzee · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful? Instead of compiling down to LISTS of instructions, we compile every program down to a SINGLE instruction, designed in hardware to do whatever that program does. The speedup would be immense. Admittedly, there would be some pressure on hardware designers. Personally, I still think all hardware should be implemented in software...

    2. Re:Merits of RISC by Fembot · · Score: 3, Funny

      ...compile every program down to a SINGLE instruction, designed in hardware to do whatever that program does.

      Q: "Why is your code full of bugs Mr Jones?"
      A: "Don't blame me its a harware issue"

      For once developers could say that and still be telling the truth :-)

  4. 25 - 400% ? by Roofus · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's a nice range there.

    Me: Hey Jim, we're throwing a party at your house tonight.

    Jim: Great! How many people are gonna come? I need to know how much beer and hoes to pick up.

    Me: Oh, plan on somewhere between 25 and 400.

  5. Forget power saving, gimme speed! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    My Z88 already gives me 20+ hours of use on 4 AA batteries, but I want something more powerful than 3.3MHz Z80!

  6. Re:Obligatory Simpsons misQuote by MacAndrew · · Score: 3, Funny

    You're giving statistics a bad (worse) name. Get your HomerStats straight, that was 14%.

    "Internet. They have that on computers now?" -- HS
    "Is the poop deck really what I think it is?" -- HS

  7. Basic engineering math gentlemen... by ctimes2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    You have to take the unknown value of x hours of battery consumption and apply it to the estimated average of the inverse expected increase in n.

    x = 1/n(25%/400% - y) where y = battery life now (say 4 hours).

    x = 1/n(16% - 4) [.16 - 4 = -3.84)

    x = 1/n(-3.84)

    1/3.84 = n .26ths of an hour increase in average expected battery life, or about 15 minutes. This is how you keep your job as an engineer... :)

    [this is a joke. this is only a joke. these numbers may be interperated by completing the square in a quadratic equation]

    --
    My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.