To Clean Technica : ” Samsung has developed a new computer that is solar-powered! The Samsung NC215S netbook it will be the first computer of its kind. The power will come from a solar panel embedded in the lid. “ Still to Clean Technica :
” a team of researchers at Australia’s RMIT have demonstrated a new, “nano-scaled” piezoelectric film’s capacity for turning mechanical pressure into electricity — bringing the dream of perpetually-charged laptop batteries one giant leap closer to reality. “
I look forward to seeing these innovations in my next laptop or iPhone. It seems I am always recharging them… With both technologies combined, we would have virtually endless batteries.
Last but not least, the University of Berkely believes we could reach one day the “ultimate energy efficiency” :
Future computers may rely on magnetic microprocessors that consume the least amount of energy allowed by the laws of physics, according to an analysis by University of California, Berkeley, electrical engineers.
Today’s silicon-based microprocessor chips rely on electric currents, or moving electrons, that generate a lot of waste heat. But microprocessors employing nanometer-sized bar magnets – like tiny refrigerator magnets – for memory, logic and switching operations theoretically would require no moving electrons.
Such chips would dissipate only 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature, the minimum allowed by the second law of thermodynamics and called the Landauer limit. That’s 1 million times less energy per operation than consumed by today’s computers.
Of course, this is nowhere near happening quickly, but that gives us some perspective for the future…