New chip for better performance and battery life

Anyone who uses a cell phone or a WiFi laptop knows the irritation of a dead-battery surprise. But now researchers at the University of Rochester have broken a barrier in wireless chip design that uses a tenth as much battery power as current designs and, better yet, will use much less in emerging wireless devices of the future.

Hui Wu, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rochester, a pioneer in a circuit design called an “injection locked frequency divider,” or ILFD, has solved the last hurdle to making the new method work. Wireless chip manufacturers have been aware of ILFD and its ability to ensure accurate data transfer using much less energy than traditional digital methods, but the technique had two fatal flaws: it could not handle a wide range of frequencies, and could not ensure a fine enough resolution within that range. Wu, together with Ali Hajimiri, associate professor of electrical engineering at California Institute of Technology, surmounted the first problem in 2001, and has now found a solution for the latter.

Wu’s new design makes the practical application of ILFDs possible. He introduced a new topology into this circuitry—instead of the old three-transistor design, his has five transistors—creating what he calls “differential mixing.” The new circuitry topology allows the ILFD to divide by three as well as two.

This tiny change has huge ramifications. A circuit design that can divide by two or three can, for instance, divide 9,999 clock pulses by two, and the 10,000th by 3, giving an average of 2.0001, which could be the frequency at which the cell phone is trying to communicate. Should the phone need to communicate at 2.0002 gigahertz, the ILFD could divide 9,998 clock pulses by two, and the 9,999th and 10,000th by three, yielding an average of 2.0002. By varying how many clock pulses are divided by two or by three, any frequency can be selected, making the power-saving ILFD method viable for the first time.

Analog & Chip Industry in india, Quality Concerns

India is witnessing an inflow of chip design from Multinatinals.
Existing companies have been increasing their staff strength in India,
while others are expanding in India.

This has resulted in a shortage of quality manpower & critical mass to
maintain.

Companies keep hiring from existing companies and this has impacted the
project execution in those companies who lost their staff.
The new design centre takes time to kick off & they just try to keep
the hired engrs without benifiting from them.

This has created shortage of manpower in Analog design. Many companies have
just one expereinced engineer.With skilled people divided among companies &
without critical mass in many companies,Indian Industry as a whole is suffering.
Corporates need to take a more wider & responsible view of the situation otherwise,
It would become more of a "trainee" industry where, trained people (1yr exp) keep on
doing job hopping & getting salary hikes without delivering projects anywhere.