VIA seems to be the rear to watch as they continue to lead the pack in cranking out energy-efficient computing parts. They have a decent clean computing initiative which has been in place for some time. Now, they have developed the unthinkable - a new fanless processor that chugs along at 500MHz, and only requires 1 watt of electricity to run. And that's when the chip is active; when it's idle, the processor will sip a mere tenth of a watt. Exclamation point.
Who's the market - it's mostly corp-to-corp, to firms that design and engineer embedded systems which require low power consumption and are looking for an eco-friendly design. Near future, VIA envisions producing 1GHz and 1.5GHz versions that consume 3.5 and 7.5 watts respectively. As always, penetration into the consumer market will require a little clock-watching, but for the leaders the future is here today. :: Ubergizmo
As computers grow increasingly powerful, computer chips are becoming more and more densely packed with transistors, the basic building blocks of microprocessors. As a result, a knotty problem is that these faster chips produce more heat. So, unless you are planning to get a water cooled rig, dissipating the heat is a concern.The classic solution is to use a simple fan to blow the heat away, so the CPU can keep doing its job. But this conventional cooling technique is limited because it suffers from air-flow problems; the molecules nearest the chip often get stuck and remain stationary, hindering the cooling effect. But now some US researchers from Purdue have developed a new "wind engine" that could take computing power to the next level.
The tiny wind engines are only a few millimeters wide, and produce an "ionic wind" that works by shifting charged particles from one end of the device to the other. As a voltage is applied to the ionic engine, positively charged particles (ions) are produced, which are then dragged towards a negatively charged wire (a cathode). When used in conjunction with a conventional fan, this dramatically increases air movement, up to 250% in certain cases. That increases the power to cooling ratio dramatically; maybe you won't have to run off to Iceland to host your servers after all.Next step is miniaturization; apparently the current size of a few millimeters is still too large, and it needs to be 100 times smaller. However, if miniaturization is successful, the device could be introduced into products within the next three years. ::BBC News
Several organizations are working to produce efficient technology at fairly basic levels - the part, the chip, the protocol. Some of the work, such as IBM's constructural theory or reversible computing in general, is still highly theoretical. Others have come off the drawing board and are actually being built.At the PC level, one of the most inefficient parts is the power supply. ColdWatt is taking the issue head on and now vending power-efficient power supplies, which generate 45 percent less heat (the key) than a typical supply. After taking into account the cost of cooling, installing these babies results in a 30 percent reduction in energy use per machine.
At the chip level, carbon based computing is coming into its own as a possibility to replace silicon chips. According to the article, silicon has been pushed to its limit, with around 45 nanometer pathways. This results in large leakage losses as electrons 'jump their tracks' and go to ground. Carbon computing could get the pathway size down to 12 nanometers, and would also be more reliable - see it in a decade or two. For the real world, chip maker VIA is pretty much out in the lead for turning out the most efficient processor available.
Finally, some folks are redesigning the communication protocols themselves to be more efficient. The Institute of Electronics and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) now have an Energy-Efficient Ethernet study group in place. It's technical, but bottom line it's going to save $450 million in the US alone. We also got people working on the protocols for wildlife tracking devices to maximize battery life out in the elements. Caribou not withstanding, I'm sure theres some spillover to other industries.
