FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NanoWatt Design™, LLC, a startup company launched in Arkansas in February 2011, recently completed an agreement to license a patent-pending technology from the University of Arkansas. The company has begun marketing the technology, an asynchronous circuit architecture called Sleep Convention Logic™ (SCL), which it sees as the breakthrough of the decade in integrated circuit design. SCL responds to market demand for ultra low power devices, without sacrificing speed.
There are now 10 billion mobile devices connecting to the Internet. Many such devices are battery operated, and there are mounting design difficulties with both supplying the power and keeping the devices from overheating. Power requirements for mobile electronics using conventional design architecture are forecast to increase 15% per year as users demand more functionality, but battery technology will provide at most 5% improvement annually. Also, because devices are already “about the right size and weight”, they cannot be easily modified to manage heat. Reducing the power required to operate a device is the only way to resolve the dilemma, and NanoWatt Design is poised to bring a solution to the market. SCL reduces standby leakage power by greater than 1,000 times and energy per operation by greater than five times compared to synchronous CMOS, the most widely used integrated circuit architecture. SCL also compares favorably to conventional synchronous circuits for speed, which makes it a candidate for design of chips used in cell phones, laptops, tablets, and even servers.
“Sleep Convention Logic is an exciting innovation in digital circuit design,” said Ronald B. Foster, Chief Executive Officer. “SCL leaves every logic stage in low-power sleep mode following every single operation, and a logic stage is only awakened to perform useful work. The breakthrough is that SCL accomplishes this without slowing down the circuit. By supplying power only as needed, SCL addresses the growing demand for smarter, more complex digital devices such as GPS, smart phones, and even medical implants. With power reduction applicable to both high and low-speed devices, our technology is an exciting option for an almost unlimited range of digital applications.”
The company offers turn-key design and delivery of ultra-low power integrated circuits to small and medium size companies that lack expertise in circuit design. The company will also sublicense the technology to larger companies for high volume applications.
NanoWatt Design is a Virtual Incubation portfolio company.
For more information about NanoWatt Design, visit www.nanowattdesign.com
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