Posted on Monday, September 16 2013 @ 15:13 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Last week at it's Intel Developer Forum, Intel showed off a Quark chip that uses so little power that it could be run from a glass of red wine. This tiny embedded computing system was capable of running a program and outputting graphics to an ePaper screen. Full details
at Bit Tech.
By itself, that hardly sounds like an impressive demonstration; Intel, however, upped the ante by showing that the system ran on so little power, it could be run from a glass of red wine with no traditional power source in sight.
It's a trick anybody with school-age children will likely recognise: the acidic wine was used as a simple chemical battery, with two metal strips acting as cathode and anode. The same technology is used in science classes and gadget shops to power small quartz clocks from oranges, lemons or even potatoes - although, Valve's Portal 2 notwithstanding, the latter is unlikely to offer the juice required to run an entire computing system.
