In a breakthrough for energy-efficient computing, engineers using the Molecular Foundry have shown for the first time that magnetic chips can operate with the lowest fundamental level of energy dissipation possible under the laws of thermodynamics.
The findings mean that dramatic reductions in power consumption are possible—as much as one-millionth the amount of energy per operation used by transistors in modern computers.
This is critical for mobile devices, which demand powerful processors that can run for a day or more on small, lightweight batteries. On a larger, industrial scale, as computing increasingly moves into ‘the cloud,’ the electricity demands of the giant cloud data centers are multiplying, collectively taking an increasing share of the country’s—and world’s—electrical grid.
