Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam

Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by bovermyer on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @06:46AM (#33419379)

Something I would like to see pursued is a race to the bottom - of power consumption, that is.

Is it physically possible to produce a chip that consumes no power? How would that be done? What would be required?

Is anyone asking questions like that?

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Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by krapp on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:06AM (#33419542)

No... no one is asking questions like that because a chip that consumes no power but still does work would be greater than 100% efficient and would violate the laws of thermodynamics.

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Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by bovermyer on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @08:25AM (#33420220)

Well sure, but exploring the _idea_ of zero power consumption might lead to interesting discoveries in efficiency and power consumption models, even if actually achieving 0% power consumption is impossible.

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Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by sc0ttyd on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @10:36AM (#33421777)

No, because that would violate the laws of thermodynamics.

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Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by contingencies on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @05:08PM (#33427489)

Yes, if the problem is viewed broadly, eg. passive packages like RFID tags. Power consumption has been a focus area in chips since forever.

For active chips, it's not possible if the problem is viewed narrowly however it's possible to have a package that contains both power generation capability (eg. solar, kinetic) and highly power efficient, sporadic processing which probably exist already. Major application areas would be long-lived deployments (eg. animal tags, probes, implants, wearables).

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