Ultimate Energy Efficiency: Magnetic Microprocessors

[Tank]

Ultimate Energy Efficiency: Magnetic Microprocessors Could Use Million Times Less Energy Than Today's Silicon Chips

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2011) — Future computers may rely on magnetic microprocessors that consume the least amount of energy allowed by the laws of physics, according to an analysis by University of California, Berkeley, electrical engineers.

Today's silicon-based microprocessor chips rely on electric currents, or moving electrons, that generate a lot of waste heat. But microprocessors employing nanometer-sized bar magnets -- like tiny refrigerator magnets -- for memory, logic and switching operations theoretically would require no moving electrons.

Such chips would dissipate only 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature, the minimum allowed by the second law of thermodynamics and called the Landauer limit. That's 1 million times less energy per operation than consumed by today's computers.

With hundreds of millions of processors being manufactured yearly this development has the potential to save many megawatts of energy and extend battery life in some battery powered devices to currently unbelievable levels. It could also make hand held solar powered devices practical in new applications.

[xSilverPhinx]

Definitely, and since the future is going to highly computerised, it'll amount to plenty.

[hismikeness]

As batteries get more and more powerful and the draw gets less and less, this will add up to batteries that may never run out or need changing, but can replenish their depletions using kinetics or solar.

[Tank]

As batteries get more and more powerful and the draw gets less and less, this will add up to batteries that may never run out or need changing, but can replenish their depletions using kinetics or solar.

I agree. In fact I specifically bought my current watch because it has and electro-kinetic power source, no battery as such. It has a small eccentric weight geared to a little generator that uses body movement to create electrical energy.