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Intel's Wine-Powered Microprocessor

angry tapir writes "In a new twist on strange brew, an Intel engineer has showed off a project using wine to power a microprocessor. The engineer poured red wine into a glass containing circuitry on two metal boards during a keynote by Genevieve Bell, Intel fellow, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Once the red wine hit the metal, the microprocessor on a circuit board powered up. The low-power microprocessor then ran a graphics program on a computer with an e-ink display."

24 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Genevieve Bell? Mike Bell? by dtmos · · Score: 3, Funny

    The engineer poured red wine into a glass containing circuitry on two metal boards during a keynote by Genevieve Bell, Intel fellow, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

    [. . .]

    Low power doesn't mean low performance, with Intel now thinking about microwatts, not milliwatts, said Mike Bell, vice president and general manager of the New Devices group, during an appearance at the keynote.

    [. . .]

    Future computing devices will be able to understand human behavior through data gathered by embedded sensors and other wearable technology, Bell said. Projects are also underway at Intel labs to bring a more "human element" to mobility, she said.

    What a poorly edited article. One never knows which Bell -- Genevieve or Mike -- is speaking.

  2. this just in by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Putting dissimilar metals connected by external conductive path in an electrolyte will cause current flow.

    I've even seen some outdoors website forum people going gaga over the concept that nailing a couple dissimilar metallic spikes into a tree can "make electricity". Please, just carry a spare battery for your cell phone, breaching the bark of a tree with reactive metals is bad.

    1. Re:this just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I got a good chuckle from your comment but maybe the point of the demo is how little juice is required to power the computer.

    2. Re:this just in by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Informative

      AC is of course correct - the point was that they made the equivalent of a potato clock, but on a computer.

      IIRC, they're not even the first to make a simple electrolysis battery drive a computer. Which means we have at least one outside boundary for the typical Slashdot editor's memory-span...

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:this just in by maestroX · · Score: 4, Funny

      AC is of course correct - the point was that they made the equivalent of a potato clock [wikihow.com], but on a computer.

      Incorrect, eloctrolysis uses direct current (DC) by definition :)

    4. Re:this just in by Dunbal · · Score: 2

      Windows isn't an operating system, it's a remote login daemon.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  3. wine? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    but wine is not an emulator! http://www.winehq.org/

    oh, the other kind of wine

    1. Re:wine? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      WINE = Wine Is Not Electricity

  4. Technology? by ByteSlicer · · Score: 2

    So, is this a compact fuel cell (new tech, catalyzes ethanol into energy), or just a chemical battery (old tech, converting acidic wine and metal contacts into energy)?

  5. Cheer up, meatbags by carlhirsch · · Score: 5, Funny

    And that's the story of how Bender's great-grandpappy was born.

    --
    . We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
  6. Re:this is exactly what we needed! by kamapuaa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The demonstration is that Intel has chips running on extremely low power, which honestly is kind of cool.

    Using a potato clock to power it was a bit of showmanship that the article submitter turned into the main focus.

    --
    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  7. What next ? by eulernet · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wine is the first step, but why don't we use blood to power microprocessors ?

    Everybody can easily extract blood, and a processor named Vampire would be so cool.

  8. Re:Could it also run on urine? by Smallpond · · Score: 3, Funny

    Plus we get to name the support site Urine Trouble.

  9. next up by wbr1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    GLADos in a potato

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  10. Re:Could it also run on urine? by jones_supa · · Score: 2

    Difficult to acquire wine in Germany?

  11. In vino verilog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    --

  12. Re:Genevieve Bell? Mike Bell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    After all of the wine mysteriously disappeared, Mike became Genevieve.

    Fixed.

  13. Wrong focus by Osgeld · · Score: 2

    The interesting part is not that intel made a battery using 2 metals and an acid, its the fact that they powered up a cpu and a display from such a weak battery.

  14. Re:This would be an automatic F by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

    Really? I would have thought showing any kind of CPU powered in any manner at all would have rocked their world.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  15. Re:this is exactly what we needed! by rubycodez · · Score: 2

    yes, we can call these electrolytes with dissimilar metals in them a "power cell", and if we make a group, a battery, of them to get either higher potentials or more current , we could call them.......batterized cells? hmnmm, maybe a single word could convey the meaning.....??

  16. Re:Could it also run on urine? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    There's Wien, which technically is in Austria. But it's nothing a little Anschluss can't solve.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  17. Re:AMD responds with beer CPU. Seriously, though . by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

    There was never a time when CPU companies were in a race to create processors that sucked up and wasted through heat dissipation as much electrical power as possible.

    I guess you never owned a Pentium 4.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  18. Re:RISC allowed 99% lower power and nobody cared by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

    It was never true that a RISC component could "go half as fast" as a CISC component, nor was it true that RISC architectures that could compete with CISC drew 1% as much power. You are comparing apples and oranges by calling the finish line 1 instruction. In other words, clocking a RISC chip at the same speed as a CISC chip doesn't make them equally fast. With RISC you need to execute a significantly greater number of instructions to execute the same source code. You also don't know what the word efficient means in the context of my statement. That being said, I've learned a long time ago that trying to educate someone with a high 7 digit SlashID is a losing battle, so enjoy your delusion.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  19. Re: this is exactly what we needed! by petermgreen · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't know if you are being serious but AIUI at least one of the electrodes is a consumable. So to maintain crude batteries you need not just a supply of electrolyte (the wine) but also a supply of refined metals.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register