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Chip Power Breakthrough Reported by Startup
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that a tiny Silicon Valley firm, Multigig, is proposing a novel way to synchronize the operations of computer chips, addressing power-consumption problems facing the semiconductor industry. From the article: 'John Wood, a British engineer who founded Multigig in 2000, devised an approach that involves sending electrical signals around square loop structures, said Haris Basit, Multigig's chief operating officer. The regular rotation works like the tick of a conventional clock, while most of the electrical power is recycled, he said. The technology can achieve 75% power savings over conventional clocking approaches, the company says.'"
Conventional electronics uses circular loop structures to send electrical signals as the electrons would get caught on corners that were too sharp. These people must have overcome that limitation.
We're getting ever closer to the perpetual motion machine, just 25% energy savings to go ;-)
Seriously though, I'll look forward to seeing this new chip in production, since more energy efficient chips means less waste heat, and thus quieter computers with fewer fans. I'll trust it when I see it, I'm not so swayed by a company that is still just a "startup" probably looking to get a boost to its stock price by anouncing a breakthrough.
Oh You POS
This will go well with the robotic tentacles. Now your berserker can use even less power, reserving more for the really critical things like the LASER (we need a /. article on military LASERS).
Why? Quite a few guys got car battery adapted to work with laptops. Up to a week on a single charge! :)
Well, the FDIV was NOT obscure (I remember seeing it in every major PC magz at that time), and it was not only one obscure bug, but more like 0.9986756235 bug.
Of Code And Men