Integrated circuits with no standby power could be in use by year's end

There's certainly no shortage of companies working to make electronics of all sorts more energy efficient, but NEC and Rohm Co now say that they're on the verge of a breakthrough that could change things in a big way, and we could possibly see it in "practical use" by the end of this year. As Tech-On! reports, both companies are hard at work on integrated circuits that consume no power at all when they're in standby mode, and turn themselves on only when power is needed. That's apparently possible by making the entire chip nonvolatile, as opposed to many current chips that only use nonvolatile merged memory. According to NEC, that'll let them "cut dissipation for digital consumer electronics in the standby mode to just a few percent of what it is now," and at no expense of convenience. While NEC isn't making any promises for the near future just yet, Rohm says that it'll begin shipping its first custom ICs in the second half of this year, and that the first products using them could start showing up by the end of 2009.

[TheMissingLink @ Jul 19th 2009 9:03PM]

Looks awesome. Maybe one of these will show up in the slimmed PS3.

[FNG @ Jul 19th 2009 9:06PM]

I hope not. If my PS3 doesn't use power while I'm not using it, it will never use any power!

[Lando Calrissian @ Jul 19th 2009 10:18PM]

Zing!

[Sean @ Jul 19th 2009 10:51PM]

Well a ps3 is in the picture above

[John @ Jul 19th 2009 11:12PM]

....that's a PS2. Notice the tray loading drive

[jol @ Jul 19th 2009 9:04PM]

That's great, but standby isn't what's eating up my batteries.

[Neil Bradley @ Jul 20th 2009 1:29AM]

Exactly. Even when you combine every item in a hardcore geek's house, those supposed "energy vampires" don't pull any appreciable power at all even when totalled up. Go for lighting and HVAC - they are more than 80% of the average home's power consumption. I don't recall what the item was specifically, but there was a $35 automatic power cord that sensed when power was shut off on the TV and would completely power off your game console. Simple arithmetic showed a 15-25 year payback. Not a smart investment.

[Yankees368 @ Jul 19th 2009 9:14PM]

This is pretty huge. Electronics use TONS of electricity while on standby. All those things around your house with a little red light on, they are sucking down energy almost at the rate that they do when they are turned on.

[electron @ Jul 19th 2009 9:24PM]

really? now tell me, how big is the screen (assuming it has one) on said device.

[jon @ Jul 19th 2009 9:28PM]

No, just no.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10257956-1.html?tag=mncol

[Mike @ Jul 19th 2009 9:32PM]

Exaggerate much? A little red LED is sucking as much juice as when my 50" HDTV is turned on? That's not to say that little trickles of power, when multiplied across all the world's devices don't add up... but saying "almost at the rate that they do when they are turned on" is crazy.

[norp @ Jul 19th 2009 9:32PM]

Nice FUD there.

Standby is relatively small compared to full power in most devices (there are exeptions). The problem is that you might have 20 or so devices in your house drawing this power 24/7 and it adds up and when you add it up across the grid it adds up to about 10% of total draw.

[3Djesus @ Jul 19th 2009 9:46PM]

Have to agree with you. I'm sure, in spite of ad's and other public awareness methods, most people tend to disregard the fact that ALL of the appliances in their humble abode are sucking juice ALL of the time when plugged in.(except maybe the toaster) Multiply this by the millions of Americans across the country and you've got a significant chunk of electricity being literally wasted.
Who cares? I do. The more electricity we consume in my country(U.S.) the higher the prices go- very simple supply and demand. Add to that all of the coal that is burned to provide that stand-by electricity and we have cubic tons of carbon dioxide, as well as fly-ash and mercury being released into the atmosphere.
I'm definitely no tree-hugger or part of the Global Warming Faction, but I do care if the air I breath is clean and I most definitely would like to cut what I spend on electricity so I can spend that saved money on other things.
Here's a good chart LLLabs did on the amount of juice our home components use http://standby.lbl.gov/summary-table.html

[3Djesus @ Jul 19th 2009 10:03PM]

This part is for you schmucks in the cheap seats- Yankees isn't talking about THE red light, he's talking about all the shit that happens behind the red light, which is a lot more then the .03W the LED uses. Lets use a different analogy. If everyone were to go out and start their cars, and let them idle for 10 minutes a day, it probably wouldn't break your financial backs. What it does do, as a collective whole, is put shitloads more Co2 in the air, as well as the collective cost to the United States as a whole- for you it's only a cup of petrol, for the whole U.S. it's barrels-thousands of them. Remember this you selfish f**ks, you may be one or two red LED's but all of us together are millions if not billions.

[justin.johnson3 @ Jul 19th 2009 11:09PM]

I can tell you for a fact that right now, my LCD TV is using less than 1 watt in standby, but when it's on it uses 165 W. If you're concerned about power consumption, buy a Kill-A-Watt or similar device and find out how much power your devices are actually using, the results may surprise you.

[UnixSystemsEngineer @ Jul 19th 2009 11:09PM]

The LEDs aren't what draws the power, geniuses.

It's the circuits that power the relays and IR sensors and on and on and on. This could be huge.

You're not gonna be a millionaire with the money you save personally, but it's a huge step forward for the electronics industry.

[o29 @ Jul 20th 2009 12:23AM]

I think that it is generally understood that it's not the actual LED that draws the power, but the standby mode that the LED indicates.

Yes, as a whole the amount of electricity that is wasted on standby power is significant. However, the assertion that electronics in standby use power "almost at the rate that they do when they are turned on" is complete bullshit, and I think that's what the other posters meant.

[sam @ Jul 20th 2009 9:45AM]

@o29: It's not always true now but actually some years ago, it seriously was scandalous and varied hugely. There really were a few devices using like 40W in standby.

Leaving those aside, the main issue with standby power compared to 'on' power is that you have to multiply standby by the time it's on standby, in order to make a true comparison. For example, let's say you have a Nintendo Wii game system. It has an 'active standby' mode which uses a hideous 10W, but let's presume you've ignored that and are using regular standby mode which is about 1W. OK, great. Now, the device uses about 20W when turned on. Let's suppose you play it on average 1 hour/day. You're using 20Whours for gameplay and 23Whours for standby, so standby actually uses more power than when it's turned on.

I did a quick google and found a 2007 survey on typical standby power usage in total across all devices, this was a survey of a small number of houses in Belgium:

"The standby power varies from 7 to 134 W and has an average of 40 W. The standby consumption is on average 274 kWh/year, representing 8% of the yearly consumption of an average household."

Standby might not be as significant as other electricity uses - 92% is something else - but given that the power isn't being 'used' so much as 'wasted', it's an obvious key target to aim at.

[rtdunham @ Jul 19th 2009 9:27PM]

edit: change "company's" (sixth word, first sentence) to "companies". It's the 21st century, guys: the apostrophe should be our slave by now! :)

[peepeepants @ Jul 19th 2009 9:51PM]

What?-- by 2020? Just make a 2nd off switch on electronics, that physically disconnects the power source to the device, internally. "Like unplugging... without unplugging!"

[Matt @ Jul 19th 2009 10:23PM]

Standby means near instant on. Off means that annoying minute or so of the computer turning on and making windows noises.

[peepeepants @ Jul 19th 2009 10:32PM]

Specifically standby mode, thx. Sorry, I was reading on peyote.

[Jordan @ Jul 19th 2009 10:01PM]

"That's apparently possible by making the entire chip NONVOLATILE, as opposed to many current chips that only use NONVOLATILE merged memory."

[Matt @ Jul 19th 2009 10:21PM]

I suppose they mean they shall make the entirety of the chip nonvolitile as opposed to just the memory.

[Olaf @ Jul 19th 2009 10:26PM]

Integrated circuits that draw no power when they are not working? I thought the CMOS gates from who knows how many years ago would qualify for that...

[FoxKenji @ Jul 19th 2009 11:26PM]

The solution has existed for years. Unplug the stupid cord from the wall and bang! zero energy consumed. Better yet, plug your devices on a power strip and flick the OFF button on it.

http://media.digikey.com/photos/Tripplite%20Photos/mfg6SPDX(-15).jpg

[Jeremy W @ Jul 20th 2009 1:43AM]

That solution requires a (sometimes) long bootup time. This solution doesn't, therefore it is superior.

[jclay34 @ Jul 19th 2009 11:59PM]

Personally I think it’s a good idea, don't matter if it only saves me 1% on the bill that’s 1% that could stay in my bank account. Some people seem to bash things when they don’t see huge gains.

[LDH @ Jul 20th 2009 12:09AM]

what??

[Covnam @ Jul 20th 2009 5:53PM]

This will be nice if only so that I no longer have to see standby lights blazing in the dark at night while I'm trying to sleep.