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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.
Can some one explain to me how this chip is connected to the world?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
interesting, I was at the East Coast DFJ venture capital competition a few weeks ago where one of the contestants was a 'radiation based' battery that lasted 20+ years, these two things together could drive a circuit forever. (sorry dont have links). Dean
There is some better info farther into the article, but the first thing they say about the chip is rediculous:
"So how did these scientists build this very efficient chip? The answer is extremely simple: they've reduced the battery size. 'Phoenix is the same size as its thin-film battery, marking a major achievement. In most cases, batteries are much larger than the processors they power, drastically expanding the size and cost of the entire system, said David Blaauw, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. For instance, the battery in a laptop computer is about 5,000 times larger than the processor and it provides only a few hours of power.'"
So... they made it more efficient by giving it a smaller battery? That is so obviously backwards... They can give it a smaller battery because it's more efficient, but not the other way around... Or did i miss something? The article certainly doesn't help explain anything more if that is really come clever something-something going on...
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Ezekiel 23:20
to be honest most of it went over my head but yes it used an isotope to power it, they had sold some samples to lockheed for continuous ciruit running for 20+ years etc at $2000 a pop. one of the points they were making was they could power a pacemake for 20+ years now with this battery, my question was didn't radiation cause problems but apprently not. Cheers, Dean
A very long time. I have replaced lithium primary batteries in train equipment that have lasted more than 10 years and still retain most if not all of their power. The batteries are a backup so don;t get used a lot, but the ones used in pacemakers usually last ten or more years. The plain truth here is batteries last as long as the application that they are needed for. Which is why retailers don't sell Lithium chromate batteries to the general masses. Who would ever buy an Duracell when they could own a SAFT Lithium Chromate that lasts 10 time longer?
And they are right. I don't work with watts every day so I don't understand exactly what 30pW mean. This is how the human brain works: comparisons with other things in life. You know that a Hummer is big because most other vehicles are smaller.
OK.. so distances are better explained in terms of Hummers placed end-to-end, instead of miles? The watch battery comparison is just as meaningless, because people don't need to power anything for 200+ years, nor do they have an intuitive feel for how much energy a watch uses compared to an implanted eye pressure sensor. If you could guess to even within 2-3 orders of magnitude, then you probably already have a feel for the size of a pW anyway.
This is after all a "news for nerds" site, so some technical information about the invention would be preferable to a PR piece. I don't see why you'd fault your fellow nerd for picking on the details - I'm just going with what's in TFA. However, I went back and read the rest of it and it's actually not bad. The problem is when an article opens with this kind of thing (and the bit about "we made it use less power by making the battery smaller")... it's pretty hard to justify reading the rest.
or better still, when you see RolandP take a weeks break from /.
./ will soon only consist of the editors and Roland...)
(at the current RolandP posting frequency that would mean
What really gets me is that I get suckered in all the time to just take the stories one by one without checking who posted them and after reading the summary I sort of get this sinking feeling, check back and sure enough... It's like being rickrolled only worse.
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No, distances are not better explained in terms of Hummer lengths rather than miles. That's because people use miles all day and can relate to them (actually kilometers in my case but that's another story). And at least me, when someone tells me that there are 20km from point A to B I still need to compare that to some other distance I know (like from my home to my school, or from my city to my cousin's). Also, they do give technical information about the power usage. They just put an additional information that helps people not familiar with them. I don't see your problem with that, if it doesn't help you let it be, it probably helps someone else. Not everyone thinks like you, try to be more tolerant.
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