Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Meltdown

I just spent 11 hours lowering a circuit's power by 400mW.  Our total budget is 76500mW, and we're getting innovative trying to get there.  How much is 400mW?  
-If you're using a laptop, it's less energy than your computer consumed while you read 'ab' (c,d,etc).  
-In 24 hours, that saves enough energy to run your AC for 8 seconds... brrrrr!
-In full sun, it's the conversion rate of a 1x1" solar panel.
-Enough to keep our product from overheating (?).

One problem with standards is they tend to box you in.  In our case, we started with a 100000mW budget, which is equivalent to the power consumed by one of those old incandescent light bulbs your kids will never know existed.  Instead of lighting your room, our product allows you to digitize data at 56,000,000,000 samples per second.  For comparison, the music you're listening to tricks your ears into perceiving continuous sound at a glacial 44,100 samples per second... we're one million times faster... and with our combined power savings, we're doing that at only 76000mW... each digitized sample requires only 1.3uJ (roughly equivalent to a strand of hair falling from your head 5mm to your pillow as you sleep).