Intel is Developing a CPU that Could be Powered by a Potato

Intel showed off its new development earlier this month, code named “Claremont.” It is a "near-threshold voltage" (NTV) processor that uses so little energy that it could be powered by solar energy, kinetic energy, or even a potato. According to an article by Jeffrey Van Camp, Digital Trends, “Today, most chips run at about 1V or more, but this chip would run at 10 millivolts or about one one-hundredth the current. More exciting is that this energy savings comes with a “5-10 X” improvement over nominal operation.”

“This concept CPU, codenamed 'Claremont' runs fast when needed but drops power to below 10 milliwatts when its workload is light – low enough to keep running while powered only by a solar cell the size of a postage stamp,” writes Intel in its release. “While the research chip will not become a product itself, the results of this research could lead to the integration of scalable near-threshold voltage circuits across a wide range of future products, reducing power consumption by 5-fold or more and extending always-on capability to a wider range of computing devices. Technologies such as this will further Intel Labs’ goal to reduce energy consumption per computation by 100- to1000-fold for applications ranging from massive data processing at one end of the spectrum to terascale-in-a-pocket at the other.”

The new NTV processor is “always-on” and yet the “ultra low power state” can keep applications running without losing energy efficient status. It is ideal whenever computer demands are modest. According to Intel’s press release, “NTV research is particularly applicable to self-powered autonomous sensor networks and monitors strewn about our environment allowing computers to “see” and intelligently “react” to the world around us. The NTV research is quickly maturing and the processor is a key enabler for Extreme Scale Computing. Extreme scale means getting the most energy-efficient performance for the power spent - achieving 1000x performance at only 10x the power, or perhaps 10x performance at 1/10 the power. This could help us realize massive Exa-scale supercomputers or put trillions of computations per second in our pockets, while being environmentally-aware.”

Our desire for smaller and smaller devices drives us to better technology. It seems to me, a layman, that this processor will also be cooler, which will eliminate the need for much of the cooling fan setups we have, in desktops, but more especially in laptops. Kudos to Intel for their newest development.

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