Power/Performance Bits: June 28


Mimicking roses for solar Scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) reproduced the epidermal cells of rose petals and integrated the transparent replicas into an organic solar cell, with an efficiency gain of 12%. The epidermis of rose petals consists of a disorganized arrangement of densely p... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 14


Origami battery A new disposable battery that folds like an origami ninja star could power biosensors and other small devices for use in challenging field conditions. The researchers, from Binghamton University, previously developed a paper-based origami battery. The first design, shaped like a matchbook, stacked four modules together. The ninja star version, which measures about 2.5 inches ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 3


Nanowire batteries University of California, Irvine researchers invented a nanowire-based battery material that can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times. Nanowires have long been sought as a battery material. However, these filaments are extremely fragile and don't hold up well to repeated discharging and recharging, or cycling. In a typical lithium-ion battery, they expand and gro... » read more

Bluetooth Smart: Doing (A Lot) More With Less


By Charles Dittmer and Prithi Ramakrishnan I was really struck by Ann Steffora Mutschler's piece last month (Running Out Of Energy?). She notes that by 2040, the energy required for computing is expected to surpass the estimated world's energy production. That's a problem. One factor could be the rise of IoT applications. Billions of devices will be deployed in the next decade, and we ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 5


DNA diodes Researchers at the University of Georgia and at Ben-Gurion University in Israel created nanoscale electronic components from single DNA molecules. "For 50 years, we have been able to place more and more computing power onto smaller and smaller chips, but we are now pushing the physical limits of silicon," said Bingqian Xu, an associate professor in the UGA College of Engineerin... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: March 22


Superconducting memory A group of scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Moscow State University developed a fundamentally new type of memory cell based on superconductors, which they believe will be able to work hundreds of times faster than memory devices commonly used today. The basic memory cells are based on quantum effects in "sandwiches" of supercond... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: March 15


Magnetic computing Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrated that magnetic chips can operate with the lowest fundamental level of energy dissipation possible under the laws of thermodynamics. "We wanted to know how small we could shrink the amount of energy needed for computing," said Jeffrey Bokor, a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sci... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: March 8


Configurable analog chip Researchers at Georgia Tech built a new configurable computing device, the Field-Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) SoC, that uses analog technology supported by digital components and can be built up to a hundred times smaller while using a thousand times less electrical power than comparable digital floating-gate configurable devices. Professionals familiar with F... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 2


Single electron transistors A group coordinated by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) is setting out on a four year program to develop single electron transistors fully compatible with CMOS technology and capable of room temperature operation. The single electron transistor (SET) switches electricity by means of a single electron. The SET is based on a quantum dot (consisting... » read more

Faster Battery Charging


There are entire libraries of available information on batteries and battery technology. The reason is the technology is hundreds of years old, and it hasn't fundamentally changed since Alessandro Volta cooked up the first practical battery in 1791. While there have been significant improvements in batteries since then, they haven't come close to keeping up with advancements in electronics t... » read more

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