the race for energy performance

The semiconductor industry faces a dual challenge. On the one hand, its customers are asking it for more and more powerful processors, on the other, they are demanding a reduction in energy consumption. Two contradictory injunctions, knowing that a chip that performs calculations is greedy in electricity, that it heats up and that in addition, energy must be spent to cool it.

All lovers of video games on PC know it: you need a good graphics card and a good fan to avoid overheating. Problematic for a personal computer, the subject becomes frankly critical at the scale of data storage centers. Concerns about global warming only increase the pressure on the sector.

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Chip manufacturers and designers strive to produce components that combine power and lower energy consumption. Qualcomm thus explains reducing the consumption of its processors by 10% with each new generation…