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

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 25


Insect robots on the water Taking inspiration from water beetles and other swimming insects, academics at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory have developed the "Row-bot," a robot that thrives in dirty water. The Row-bot mimics the way that one aquatic insect, the water boatman, moves and the way that it feeds on rich organic matter in the dirty water it swims in. The Row-bot project aims to ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 3


Lithium-air batteries gain ground Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a working laboratory demonstration of a lithium-oxygen battery which has very high energy density, is more than 90% efficient, and can be recharged more than 2000 times. Their demonstrator relies on a highly porous, 'fluffy' carbon electrode made from graphene (comprising one-atom-thick sheets of ca... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 20


Memristors come in threes The race is on to produce a commercial memristor, and a duo from ETH Zurich may be providing a bit more push. "Basically, memristors require less energy since they work at lower voltages," explained Jennifer Rupp, professor in the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich. "They can be made much smaller than today's memory modules, and therefore offer much greater de... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 6


Portabella batteries Researchers at the University of California, Riverside created a new type of lithium-ion battery anode using portabella mushrooms, which are inexpensive, environmentally friendly and easy to produce. The current industry standard for rechargeable lithium-ion battery anodes is synthetic graphite, which comes with a high cost of manufacturing because it requires tedious pu... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 1


Growing graphene nanoribbons University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers discovered a way to grow graphene nanoribbons with desirable semiconducting properties directly on a conventional germanium semiconductor wafer. This could allow manufacturers to easily use graphene nanoribbons in hybrid integrated circuits, which promise to significantly boost the performance of next-generation electroni... » read more

Recharging The Battery


There are few technologies in today’s cutting-edge technological environment that have a difficult time finding new levels of performance. Battery technology is one of them. With the exception of a few experimental offerings, batteries and their performance metrics are relatively flat. There has been some progress, of course. But when compared to other technologies such as transistors, mem... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 30


Tiny, solar-powered sensors Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it, even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous ultralow-power converters that used the same approach had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent. ... » read more

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