Claremont : Chip that runs on solar power

Intel introduced an innovative chip this week which could lead to devices with significantly lower energy consumption. The chip called Claremont is a near-threshold voltage processor, which allows transistors to operate at super-low, near "threshold" voltages to increase efficiency and decrease energy consumption. 

 While experimenting, chip was powered only off a solar cell of the size of a postage stamp which shows its minimal power requirement. The chip can run on other power sources as well. Moreover, it iss heat-sink free, and rather than operating at those super low thresholds all the time, it switches into NTV mode (under 10 mW in power consumption) when its workload is light to save power in ultra low power state

The technology can be used to develop zero-power architectures where power consumption is so low that we could power entire digital devices off solar energy, or off the energy that surrounds us every day, like vibrations or movements, ambient wireless signals or solar power. It can be used in applications ranging from processors and mobile devices to embedded devices, appliances and automobiles.

Energy efficiency has always been a concern for device manufacturers and chipset makers, but as the hardware industry moves to mobile and more lightweight computing, it's become a much bigger issue. Intel has been working on low power chips since long to empower small gadgets and ARM and OAK Trial processors are such inventions which are widely used today. NTV is a significantly bigger step than these commercial processors which has improved energy consumption by 5 to 10 times.

But the technology is not without problems at present. When electrical noise is introduced, logic level readings can be inaccurate and hence the challenge is to maintain a balance of performance versus efficiency. Though this innovative chip is of no practical application as present but it is definitely a major step towards energy efficient future processors.