Today's microprocessors are powered by electric currents, which generate a lot of waste heat. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have discovered that microprocessors using tiny magnets (pictured below) for logic, memory, and switching operations would dissipate just 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature. That's a very small amount of electricity. In fact, it's the smallest amount of electricity possible to transmit information--a number known as the Landauer limit.
"In principle, one could, I think, build real circuits that would operate right at the Landauer limit,” said Jeffrey Bokor, a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering, in a statement. "Even if we could get within one order of magnitude, a factor of 10, of the Landauer limit, it would represent a huge reduction in energy consumption for electronics. It would be absolutely revolutionary."
There are still obstacles to overcome before magnetic microprocessors can be used en masse. One major problem: they still lag in reliability, speed, and performance compared to today's microprocessors. And in a world that expects fast and reliable electronics, that won't sit well. But as computers become ever-more prevalent over the coming decades--and energy consumption grows--we can use all the help we can get.
