Computing without breaking a sweat
Rick van Rein
GroenGemak
<geen email>
My laptop always seems to be hot and sweaty from doing things, even if I don't ask it to do anything. This is a senseless waste of energy, and it is largely due to design choices that stem from an era when energy was in abundant supply. Mobile devices and the end of cheap fossil fuel are two reasons why we should change, and conserve energy. This lecture dives into the lowest levels of computing, and explains which energy-efficiency improvements are currently being worked on, and how we should change our style of hardware and software design. We sketch the architecture of future computers, starting at the level of the hardware and working our way up to kernel and applications. Will Unix be flexible enough to follow this radical redesign?

Keywords:

  • low-energy computing
  • interrupt-driven computing
  • non-volatile memory
  • asynchronous electronics
  • solid-state devices
  • data-flow architecture
  • bistable memory
  • clocktick interrupts
  • bistable displays
  • power budgeting

GroenGemak is a company that is looking for sustainable solutions that do not limit our quality of life. Being started by a computer scientist, the main focal area of GroenGemak is sustainable technology, with an emphasis on computing. Dr.ir. Rick van Rein has been operating OpenFortress for 7 years, but felt an increasing personal itch to help develop his area of computer science into more sustainable technology. GroenGemak recently arose from that wish. A background in computer science and electrical engineering (including chip technology) turn out to be useful in realising that.


Last modified: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:20:22 +0200