The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $24.5 million to researchers
at the University of California, Berkeley, to head an ambitious,
multi-institutional center that could one day lead to a million-fold reduction
in power consumption by electronics.
The researchers said such a dramatic increase in energy efficiency could allow
the digital revolution to continue well beyond the limits that would otherwise
be imposed by its growing demand for energy, and allow portable applications
that are currently too energy inefficient to implement. These applications
include keyboard-less computing using voice recognition systems or software that
can automatically – and accurately – translate spoken words into a different
language.
The five-year grant by the NSF will be used to establish the
Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science, or E3S, one of only five
multi-institutional Science and Technology Centers to be established this year.
UC Berkeley researchers will team up with colleagues at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Contra Costa College, Los Angeles
Trade Technical College and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to dramatically
dampen electronics' appetite for power.
Read the full story at UC Berkeley: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2010/02/23_nsf_award.shtml