GLOBAL CHALLENGES

Steep Aims to Raise Performance, Cut Heat and Power of Electronics

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 11-03-10 | Comments

The European Union has banded together industry, national research centers and academia to beat the heat being generated by today's semiconductor microchips. By adopting a new type of ultra-low-power transistor with a steep cutoff, the EU Steep program aims to cut the active power of electronics by 10 times, as well as cut standby power to zero for everything from tiny mobile phones to data centers.

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Steep Aims to Raise Performance, Cut Heat and Power of ElectronicsNanowires are cylindrical structures measuring only a few nanometers in diameter, which allow optimum electrostatic control of the transistor channel.
The three-year, 4 million euro (U.S. $5.5 million) Steep program will develop a new nanowire-based transistor that outperforms today's silicon transistors, and yet consumes a fraction of the power.

The European Union-funded program will be coordinated by Ecole Polytechnique F�d�rale de Lausanne (France), and will band together the efforts of IBM Research (Zurich), Infineon Technologies (Neubiberg, Germany) and Global Foundries (Milpitas, Calif.), along with the CEA-LETI (Electronics and Information Technologies Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission, Grenoble, France), Forschungszentrum J�lich (Germany), the University of Bologna, the University of Dortmund, the University of Udine and the University of Pisa.

Steep aims to solve the energy consumption problems with today's leaky chips by virtue of a new nanowire-based transistor that combines zero-leakage standby power with half-volt power supplies�achievements that the promoters claim will increase energy efficiency by 1,000 percent.

"We call it the zero-watt PC," said Professor Adrian Ionescu, director of the project at Ecole Polytechnique F�d�rale de Lausanne. "The Holy Grail in electronics, a computer that utilizes negligible energy when it's in sleep mode."

Professor Adrian M. Ionescu, Nanolab, Ecole Polytechnique F�d�rale de Lausanne, who is coordinating the Steeper program.

The EU's motivation is a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) claiming that the energy consumed by information, communications and consumer electronics will double by 2022 and triple by 2030, the most wasteful of which is the electricity consumed while in standby mode.

Today, standby power accounts for 10 percent of home and office usage and by 2020 will equal the entire consumption of Austria, the Czech Republic and Portugal combined�about 49 terawatts.

Next: Steep's Centerpiece >>

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