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. "

Comments

Leakage?

[kko]

Are these those famous Olestra chips everybody talks about?

Re:1/1000th?

[merreborn]

It's not that confusing. A current intel chip spends half it's power consumption on computing, and wastes the other half. This new process reduces that waste to 1/1000th of what it was -- if a chip used to consume 2 watts, 1 on computing, 1 on waste, now it will consume only 1.001 watts, 1 on computing, .001 on waste. The "designed to consume a tenth of the power" is about a completely unrelated processor: the next generation of Pentium M is supposed to consume 1/10th the power it currently conusmes. Score one for reading comprehension.