[tt] Bio-Implants enabled by low-power chips

[Hughes, James J.]

http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2008/02/04/daily3.html

Monday, February 4, 2008 - 12:01 PM CST

Texas Instruments declares microchip breakthrough

Dallas Business Journal

Researchers at Texas Instruments and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology have drawn the curtain back on an energy efficient chip
design that they believe will lead to self-charging cellphones and
dramatic advances in implantable medical technology.

A team of researchers at Cambridge, Mass.-based MIT and Dallas-based TI
worked together to create a microchip that requires significantly less
electricity than the industry standard of 1 volt. Their creation, which
will be shown to the International Solid State Circuits Conference in
San Francisco, Calif. on Monday night, requires only 0.3 volts, a
two-thirds reduction in required electricity.

In order for consumer technology to take advantage of the breakthrough,
said MIT Professor Anatha Chandrakasan, memory and logic circuits will
have to be redesigned due to the new chip's unique DC-to-DC power
conversion, which takes place on the chip instead of through an external
component. Products bearing the new chips could be available in five
years.

TI and MIT researchers envision the breakthrough leading to cellphones
that run off ambient energy; portable computing devices with vastly
improved running times; and medical implants that are powered simply by
body heat and movement.

"We are proud to be part of this revolutionary, world-class university
research," said Dr. Dennis Buss, chief scientist at Texas Instruments.

The project was funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency.