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Intel Experimental Processor Runs On Solar Power
An anonymous reader writes "For the IDF keynote, Intel showed an experimental processor that is solar powered (incandescent light shining on a solar panel). The whole computer itself still runs on regular power; only the processor itself is solar. From the article: 'The concept processor, code-named Claremont, can run light workloads on solar power by dropping energy consumption to under 10 milliwatts, said Justin Rattner, chief technology officer at Intel, during a keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. That is low enough to keep a chip running on a solar cell the size of a stamp.'"
...a Beowulf cluster of those (on your roof).
It's not for you.
It's for people who actually see the sun sometimes.
That makes sense. Now what if you want to run dark workloads?
AnandTech has some more details.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Urgh - a quick google unearths nothing more than copy-pastes of this article
Anyone got something more interesting on the actual tech?
Well, a quick Google for "claremont site:intel.com" found this page, but I suspect somebody else has already discovered it and posted it here, or the site's running from that processor and somebody turned the light off, as it's responding rather slowly. From the Google summary, it's a "Near Threshold Voltage Processor".
If a device's appetite for power falls below what can be gathered passively from the environment, then it doesn't need a battery or power cord, and can run practically forever, which is a big impact.
Is a solar powered pocket calculator a "pretty show piece"? The first calculators I got to use plugged into wall sockets for power. A solar powered laptop is the obvious progression of that idea that was bound to happen as soon as the power requirements could be reduced enough.
And as for your objection, nobody said the thing couldn't have a rechargeable battery. If the thing is going to be in darkness forever you use something else for that very contrived edge case.
Would the last person to leave, please DON'T turn off the lights.
As long as the rest of the computer needs conventional power, a solar-powered CPU doesn't give you any advantage. What I think they actually wanted to show is "see, our processor needs that little energy that you can even put it on a solar cell!" Given that processors are usually hidden somewhere in a case, having a solar cell attached to it wouldn't usually do much good anyway. Of course if all components of the computer can be made to consume that little energy, the whole computer may be solar cell driven; however in that case you'd certainly not put separate cells for each component; instead you'd power the whole computer from a central solar cell unit.
Also note that processors needing little energy are useful even without solar cells.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
With the rate power consumption of CPU cores has been increasing
You are a few years behind the curve. Since the pentium D CPU TDP (roughly power consumption under the highest normal load) has stayed pretty much flat while core counts and performance of individual cores have gone up (despite the drop in clockspeeds)
The power consumption per core has been going down in recent times. The pentium D 965 extreme has two cores, a clockspeed of 3.73 GHz and a TDP of 130W. The i7-990x has six cores.a nominal clockspeed of 3.47 GHz (plus turbo boost) and a TDP of 130W.
Comparing the two processors (made about 5 years apart) the later processor has the same TDP, three times as many cores and slightly lower clockspeed (but each core has far better performance at a given clockspeed)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Dear Internet Poster,
I am sorry to hear that your sarcasm meter is broken. I would like to take this opportunity to explain that my comment was made purely as a joke, and that I am actually a strong supporter of alternative energy and efficiency. I understand the technical feats involved in this project, but I just thought it was hilarious that their "super energy efficient processor" was being powered by an incandescent light bulb. (Not that making fun of climate denialists isn't fun too, but it's not what I was thinking...)
TC
P.S., this post was written in a light-hearted manner as well. Don't take it personally.