Cutting energy used by electronics focus of new center

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $24.5 million to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, to head an ambitious, multi-institutional center that could one day lead to a million-fold reduction in power consumption by electronics. The researchers said such a dramatic increase in energy efficiency could allow the digital revolution to continue well beyond the limits that would otherwise be imposed by its growing demand for energy, and allow portable applications that are currently too energy inefficient to implement. These applications include keyboard-less computing using voice recognition systems or software that can automatically – and accurately – translate spoken words into a different language. The five-year grant by the NSF will be used to establish the Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science, or E3S, one of only five multi-institutional Science and Technology Centers to be established this year. UC Berkeley researchers will team up with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Contra Costa College, Los Angeles Trade Technical College and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to dramatically dampen electronics' appetite for power. "Information processing consumes more and more energy as it becomes more intertwined with our lives," said Eli Yablonovitch, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and the director of the Center for E3S. "This is a problem for both battery-powered equipment and for large, stationary server farms.