Thanks to a grant by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments were able to discover a new way to make portable electronics up to 10 times more energy-efficient. The design could make batteries for critical devices like cell phones and implantable medical devices and sensors last significantly longer.  

The secret to the improvement in energy efficiency was making the processing chip circuits on the electronics use less power, thereby creating less demand on the battery.  Most current chips operate at around one volt, the DARPA funded design requires just 0.3 volts.  

The research team believes that commercial applications could become available in five years or less.  This week, they are presenting their work at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.  Read More...