New Super-Efficient Chip Could Run on Body Heat

MIT researchers, working with researchers at Texas Instruments, have developed a chip that uses 70 percent less voltage than current chip technologies, which could lead to an order-of-magnitude increase in energy efficiency for electronics in the next five years. “It will extend the battery lifetime of portable devices in areas like medical electronics,” says MIT electrical engineering professor Anantha Chandrakasan. “When you look at the digital processor, the fact is that we may be able to reduce the energy needed by 10 times.” The chip uses so little power that it could allow sensors, communication devices, and other gadgets to run on body heat and movement alone. Better batteries and circuit design have already led to smaller, more mobile electronic devices, but changing a battery is often not an option for military and medical personnel. Military researchers at DARPA, which helped fund the MIT research, want to increase the lifespan of mobile technology, and even eliminate the need to recharge a device. Military strategist believe that such low-power chips could be used in body and environmental sensors. Creating a low-voltage chip is difficult because transistors use voltage to switch on and off, and at low voltages variations introduced during transistor production can cause errors. “When you scale voltages, the first thing to break is memory on a chip,” Chandrakasan says. “You have to redesign the memory and logic so you can handle the variation.” Chandrakasan says working with scalable energy voltages requires a whole suite of design techniques, including a fundamental change in the memory cell from six transistors to eight.

Wired News (02/04/08) Madrigal, Alexis
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