IBM-Led Research Project Seeks Tenfold Boost in Electronics’ Energy Efficiency

IBM announced a major European research initiative Wednesday that seeks to drastically increase the energy efficiency of electronics in the active mode and “virtually eliminate power consumption when they are in passive or standby mode.” The company said it’s collaborating with Switzerland’s research body Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and a host of corporate research organizations and universities on the research project, called Steeper. It will explore the use of nanotechnology to increase by “ten times” the energy efficiency of electronics, including mobile phones, laptops, TVs and supercomputers, and extend battery life of devices, IBM said.

EPFL will coordinate the project that will include corporate research bodies like IBM Research of Zurich, Infineon and Global Foundries, research institutes like CEA-LETI and Forschungszentrum Julich and the University of Bologna, University of Dortmund, University of Udine and University of Pisa. Scientists at the project will use “tunnel field effect transistors (TFET) and semiconducting nanowires to improve the efficient use of energy in electronics,” IBM said.

Just as a leaky water faucet continues to drip even after the valve is closed as tightly as possible, transistors constantly leak energy in the on-mode or waste energy in the off-state, IBM said. “In Steeper, scientists not only hope to contain the leak by using a new method to close the valve or gate of the transistor more tightly but also open and close the gate for maximum current flow with less turns,” resulting in less voltage for maximum efficiency, the company said. The International Energy Agency estimates that electronic devices account for 15 percent of household energy use, IBM said. Energy used by information and communications technologies and consumer electronics is expected to triple by 2030 to 1,700 terawatt hours, equal to the combined residential energy use in the U.S. and Japan in 2009, it said.

The project hopes to reduce the watts per transistor to 0.5 or even to 0.2 volts, said an IBM spokesman. If that can be achieved “it equals 10 times improvement, meaning your cellphone battery will last 10 times longer,” he said. In the case of standby or “vampire” power, when a PC is left plugged in, “it will draw nearly 0 watts, but still turn on instantly,” the spokesman said. The same efficiency gains can be also be applied to devices without batteries, he said.

Standby power use in the Europe accounts for about 10 percent of electricity use in homes and offices, IBM said. It’s estimated that by 2020, standby power use in the European Union will increase to 49 terawatt hours a year, it said. The research project aims to develop “novel devices” such as “steep slope transistors,” from which the project gets its name, that can provide a “much more abrupt transition between the off and on states,” IBM said. “This simultaneously allows for reducing the sub-threshold leakage and lowering the voltage operation."

"Power dissipation has become one of the major challenges for today’s electronics, particularly as the number of devices used by businesses and consumers multiplies globally,” said Heike Riel, who heads the nanoscale electronics group at IBM Research-Zurich. “By applying our collective research in TFETs with semiconducting nanowires we aim to significantly reduce the power consumption of the basic building blocks of integrated circuits affecting the smallest consumer electronics to massive, supercomputers.”