The technology world’s quest for microchips that do not eat up power when the appliances are on ‘standby’ has been realized by a group of Japanese scientists. Japanese IT company NEC Corporation (NEC) and researchers at Tohoku University developed the innovative microchip that will not consume energy when the devices are on standby mode.
Small magnets are deployed in the chip to store the data instead of power in traditional chips. That means recovery of data can be done quickly on start-up though the chips will consume less energy. According to its designers, the chip will cut the consumption of power by 25 percent. The circuits are strongly advisable for servers in data centers since they should remain in standby or in use round the clock. A 25 percent cut in power consumption will certainly be a huge advantage in data centers, especially in a time when popularity of server-based cloud computing is rocketing up.
Traditional microchips currently used in electronic devices, such as computers, TVs and other devices, consume energy even if the devices are on standby. People behind the experiment believe that the new chips will be widely used in electronic devices from 2015. In fact, the technology of the magnet-based chips has been there for sometime around. But they were not largely used as they respond slower than the conventional chips, says UBM Electronics, an electronics industry analyst.
According to estimates, in a typical British household, usage of conventional chip in home appliances consumes almost 10 percent of residential electricity use. Hence, the widespread usage of the new chip will be a great step in saving the energy and saving the environment, analysts say. This is what Prof. Naoki Kasai of Tohoku University has to say about the new chip:
Power for the memory can be shut off since it does not require electric power to save or store data. Instead, it uses small magnets to store ‘0’ and ‘1’.
Via: Guardian
