Intel's Solar Powered Processor on a Linux PC

Intel recently showcased a new processor codenamed “Claremont”. To the naked eye this processor would make little impact on a casual on-looker, except perhaps for the lack of a heat sink, that pointy piece of metal clamped to most modern processors to remove heat quickly.

Claremont is a near-threshold voltage (NTV) processor. Most processor designs operate at around 1V, but Claremont operates in the 400-500 millivolts range, close to the threshold at which transistors start to conduct current. Computer processors use differences in voltages to distinguish between 1's and 0's, the binary building blocks of computer logic. In the range at which the Claremont operates these differences become so small that they become ultra-susceptible to noise from a variety of sources.

To overcome these difficulties the designers were forced develop new design techniques, but after several years the result is a heat-sink free processor that can be used in NTV mode at less than 10mW and 5X better energy efficiency. To demonstrate this efficiency the new processor was used to run a Personal Computer running Linux. The power source for the processor was a post-it sized solar cell.

While the Claremont will never be commercially available itself the implications of its design are far-reaching. Currently chip manufacturers produce different processors for mobile devices than for PCs. An NTV processor could be used in both, in a one-size-fits-all environment. Such devices could be powered not just by solar cells, but by ambient heat, vibrations or even the radio waves that are present in the air all around us. At a time when energy is becoming more expensive (to our wallets and the environment) NTV technology could be the start in a low power silicon revolution.