June 23, 2008 - Researchers at the University of Michigan have designed a microchip that uses 30,000 times less power in sleep mode compared to current technologies, CleanTech reports.

The new Phoenix Processor, developed for use in sensors, consumes just 30 trillionths of a watt during sleep mode - a low-power record, the researchers say.

Sensors spend as much as 99% of their time in sleep mode, waking up only a regular intervals for brief periods of time. The Phoenix employs very narrow "power gates" to limit the flow of electric current when the sensor is idle.

"One of things we did was go to back in time a little bit in terms of the technology we use," says Dennis Sylvester, an associate professor in the university's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "If you keep going back the transistors tend to be, of course they're larger, they're less leaky, and so there's a sweet spot there where you kind of balance out the size of the chip and the size of the battery at about one square millimeter."

Though still in the research stage, the Phoenix wouldn't be difficult to manufacture commercially, according to Sylvester. "The costs of manufacturing are very low," he says. "There's no special device technologies. We don't use a lot of different, special transistor technologies or anything. It's all in the design — the architecture."