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Intel Developing Ultra-Low Power Chips
ErikPeterson wrote to mention a C|Net article discussing Intel's development of low-power chips for mobile applications. From the article: "The chipmaking giant announced on Monday a new technique that it said could help cut back on wasted battery power in cell phones and mobile devices by as much as 1,000 times current levels. Active computing accounts for only half the power Intel processors use. The other half is gobbled up by a leakage current in transistors that exists when a machine is in a low-level sleep state, Intel said. The new version of the company's 65-nanometer wafer-making process, internally known as P1265, is better than Intel's current process at helping prevent the extra power from being sapped from the battery, the chipmaker said. "
Random quotes:
"1,000 times current levels."
"The other half [of the energy] is gobbled up by a leakage current in transistors"
"designed to consume a tenth of the power"
"about a tenth the demand"
"About two years ago, the Intel process and development groups decided to find out if they could expand the space or the scope that 65-nanometer technology could serve and make adjustments so it could make a chip with extra-low leakage."
Um, so, wait, making chips with extra low transistor leakage, where leakage is only half of the chips power consumption, can result in one tenth power consumption? And even, 1/1000th what some chips use? 1/1000th the power consumption of what, a penny in the circuit breaker?
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...when they decided to switch to Intel. When the switch was announced, my question was: "Hmmm, I wonder what Apple knows about Intel's plans that they can't or won't talk about?" This certainly looks like something that would fit with Apple's future plans regarding iPods and other mobile devices.
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I would really be interested to see what Apple can do with this. However, they need to make sure that the heat is as minimal as possible. I'm getting tired of even the G3 iBooks getting wayyyy too warm, let alone the G4 'books. We need to get those temperatures down, power consumption down (seems like these new chips will do that), and make the Lithium Ion batteries last longer, so we don't have guys putting "Powerbook batteries last only 18 months!" everywhere.
If they've determined a more efficient way to run their instructions, yes. There are more ways to make the processor perform better other than just speeding it up. A case study is the various AMD processors that, despite being technically slower, perform better.
Another valid option is to specialize the processor and focus all the resources on a specific task, but I don't think Intel is doing that.