Gaël Pillonnet, a seasoned energy conversion expert at CEA-Leti, has come up with an ingenious solution that significantly reduces the energy consumption of traditional transistors, albeit at a slower computation speed. This opens up a host of possibilities for achieving energy efficiency and computational performance, especially in edge computing.
While microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have been used to develop low-power computing systems before, they have been hampered by their reliance on mechanical contacts, which limit the number of logical operations possible.
Gaël Pillonnet’s approach overcomes this limitation by enabling contactless MEMS components for logic computation. By using adiabatic transformation during information processing, it is possible to achieve near-zero power consumption at lower calculation frequencies. This breakthrough in MEMS technology provides unprecedented durability to the systems in which they are integrated, making it a game changer in the field of computing.
What used to be impossible with conventional approach can now be imagined with contactless MEMS.
Next steps will therefore involve integrating this process into complex logic applications, reducing its size, and increasing the heat resistance of devices that can already withstand up to 150 °C.A.