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A 30-Picowatt Processor For Sensors
Roland Piquepaille writes "University of Michigan (U-M) researchers have developed an ultra low power microchip which 'uses 30,000 times less power in sleep mode and 10 times less in active mode than comparable chips now on the market.' It only consumes 30 picowatts in sleep mode, which means that a simple watch battery could power the chip for more than 200 years. Of course, this is not a processor for your next computer. It is designed for sensor-based devices such as medical implants, environment monitors or surveillance equipment. However, the design is very clever." Roland's blog has some more information, including a die picture of the chip, known as the Phoenix.
The lithium CR1216 batteries on my shelf started corroding after 4 years. Several of the AG3/CX41 alkaline batteries began leaking after 5 years. Still untouched, in their wrappers.
sounds like it just does automaticly what a micro programed for use with sensors does. Usualy you have a counter in the chip that is driven from a clock pulse derived from the main system clock that generates an interupt (waking the proccesor up) every time it overflows. As each overflow is the same time interval apart this can be used to run a subroutine that checks whether it's time to run the sensing program yet. If it is the sending program is run and the proccesor goes back to sleep only waking on each interupt. Doing this proccesors can be made that consume nano watts of power. Automating this reduces the versitility of the microcontroller, although if it has resulted in good power savings then cool.
You are referencing the blog, not the article; the article is more clear about it. They explain that the cool part of this processor is that it is so efficient, it only requires a tiny battery the same size as the processor. The main thing that is preventing portable electronics from being smaller is their battery. Case in point: the laptop which has a battery 5000 times larger than the part that is actually doing the work.
Kind of an obvious and not so ground breaking statement, but at least it makes sense.
That die isn't particularly small - 1mm by 1mm. Plenty of existing chips have dies that size, but they're just packaged in larger packages to space out the pins. This picture shows a die (about 3mm*3mm) and the remains of its package so you have an idea of how small a die can be, even in a large package.
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The guy (who admits to not knowing his stuff so perhaps we can forgive him) really hasnt got a clue
The processor is designed specifically for sensors that wake up, do a few calculations and go back to sleep, these type of devices are genrally battery powered and off grid and generally make a decision whether to power up some other device eg to transmit the data. The device would probably be useless for anything involving serious processing, even the processor in an optical mouse would probably wipe the floor with it!
Barring that there are billions (yes billions not millions) of sensor devices out there currently using PIC/AMR/8051 derivatives that may benefit from this technology.
Interestingly we are getting to a level of power where even the most inneficient generator (or a low power radio signal) and a rather small capacitor could power it forever
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> a simple watch battery could power the chip for more than 200 years
Rubbish! Even if you draw ZERO power from a watch battery, it will be totally flat in less than a tenth of this time. They have a 15-20 year shelf life and obviously that will only get worse if you put it in a device that draws power from it. You would need at least 10 batteries to power the device for 200 years.
pJ is not a pW. If this chip you're referring to ran at 10 Hz, it would consume 83 pW.