IBM has greener way to reuse silicon
686793
IBM Corp. says it has developed a greener method for recycling precious silicon that is wasted during computer chip manufacturing.
688142
In an advance that could lead to lighter spacecraft and smarter cars, researchers have developed a new technique for producing a high-quality semiconductor that's much more resistant to extreme conditions than the silicon found in most of today's electronics.
424726
IBM has boosted the power efficiency of its PowerPC 750CL and PowerPC 970GX chips, part of a bid to reach a wider range of enterprise and consumer applications.
726353
By JORDAN ROBERTSON  SAN JOSE, Calif. - IBM has devised a way to triple the amount of memory stored on computer chips and double the performance of data-hungry processors by replacing a problematic type of memory with a variety that uses much less space on the slice of silicon.
526997
IBM says it has found the answer: New technology that squeezes more memory onto a slice of silicon. By the Associated Press.
413245
The firm is planning new ways to shrink transistors and increase chip speed. Could "spintronics" replace silicon-based technology?
108849
Major vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony are working together to push through a legislative mandate in the U.S. that will make it easier for users to recycle their consumer electronics.The mandate calls for companies to cut&#160;consumer electronics recycling&#160;costs and to make their reuse and recycling the highest priority when manufacturing products, panelists said during a talk at the International Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas.The cost to consumers of recycling products, including things like collection fees, is high, the panelists said, and some manufacturers have taken advantage of weak recycling laws to manufacture products that cannot be effectively recycled or reused.Some companies have standards in place to manufacture products that are easy to recycle, but others hope to drive down their own costs by adopting lower production standards, the panelists said.A legislative mandate would create a level playing field for manufacturers, said Tod Arbogast, director of sustainable business at Dell. A common approach to designing for recycling will promote the production of products that can be recycled and drive down manufacturing costs through effective product design and distribution.As an example of what can be done, Sony&#39;s new OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV is designed to be disassembled by common household tools, said Douglas Smith, Sony&#39;s director of corporate environmental affairs. It is a step toward making products that can be easily recycled, he said.To be effective, recycling processes will be needed to convert used components back to original raw material for other products, followed by reuse or resale. Production costs can be cut through recycling and reusing materials rather than extracting and processing raw materials, said Dell&#39;s Arbogast.&quot;There are significant economic benefits in doing so as well as significant environmental benefits, which I think are often forgotten,&quot; Arbogast said.HP is adopting standards to recycle printers with plastic that doesn&#39;t convert to raw material, said Renee St. Denis, director of recycling at HP. The end-of-life resale value of printers after seven to 10 years of usage is minimal, but the high cost of plastics versus other printer components has made the company come up with innovative reuses of those plastics, she said.Dell already follows a Texas state law that requires PC manufacturers to dispose of products as easily as they are placed in the market, Arbogast said. The company accepts used Dell PCs for free via mail, Arbogast said.Sony is taking full responsibility for the products its manufactures -- cell phones, TVs and other devices -- by offering the ability to recycle them at no cost, Smith said.In March, Sony will launch a program in the U.S. where consumers can recycle consumer electronics for free by dropping them off at locations within a 20-mile radius of any SonyStyle store. Though the company has only 55 SonyStyle stores in the U.S., the company hopes to expand the effort by involving its distributors and other companies.Sony takes full responsibility for products it manufactures and has already recycled a giant TV screen belonging to the city of Tampa Bay for free, and the company wants to deliver the same recycling ability to users, said Smith.
452846
IBM and AMD have jointly developed a new method for implementing strained silicon technology on both positive and negative transistors, a technique they said could improve transistor speeds by as much as 24%.
22413
Blog: IBM's Venture Capital Group is placing its own bets in clean tech in energy efficiency and water conservation.
545483
In dueling announcements, Intel Corp. and IBM separately say they have solved a puzzle perplexing the semiconductor industry about how to reduce energy loss in microchip transistors
222319
Researchers at IBM IBM.N and  Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD.N have improved a chip-making  technology called strained silicon, boosting  semiconductor  performance at a time when such gains are increasingly hard to  come by, the companies said on Sunday.
460121
A breakthrough in the way scientists make crystals could lead to a replacement for silicon as the basis for making chips in electronic devices.
536866
IBM has created a process for repurposing scrap semiconductor wafers.
216281
Dell plans to become the greenest IT company by reducing greenhouse emissions.
316022
IBM has created a process to repurposing scrap semiconductor wafers for use by the solar cell industry.
53861
Advanced Micro Devices and IBM have collaborated on new strained silicon technology, which stands to boost transistor speed. In a statement ahead of the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco
346206
A phone made of recycled materials and a transmission tower that uses 50 percent less energy were two of the green technologies on show at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.The environment was top of the agenda in the opening keynote session, where Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association, characterized mobile communications as an energy-saving alternative to flying or driving. But he acknowledged the downsides, saying, &quot;We must, as an industry, do something about reducing energy consumption, and support renewable energy and recycling.&quot;The GSM Association is using its development fund to support a number of technologies with benefits for the environment, he said, including green energy sources for off-grid base stations. These include a generator powered by waste vegetable oil, developed by Ericsson, and in Namibia the creation of a wind-powered base station, he said.&quot;The environmental results have been very encouraging. We are sharing these initiatives,&quot; he said.Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, president and CEO of Nokia, preferred to start with the bad news.&quot;Our current model of development is not sustainable. In many ways we are living beyond our means. As much as technology fascinates us and inspires us to do more things, something has to change,&quot; he said.He wants the industry to make more efficient use of materials and to recycle its waste, to optimize transportation and logistics, and to design for energy efficient operation.From his pocket he then produced &quot;Remade,&quot; a concept phone manufactured mostly from recycled materials and designed to consume less energy in production and operation than existing phones. The case is made from recycled aluminium drinks cans, the rubber keyboard from old car tires, and plastic parts from recycled drink bottles.&quot;It&#39;s only a concept. I cannot make a phone call with it yet,&quot; he said, dashing the audience&#39;s hopes of picking one up from the Nokia stand later.Wang Jianzhou, chairman and CEO of China Mobile, also had recycling and energy conservation on his mind.The company is promoting simpler packaging for the phones it resells, with the goal of saving around 57,000 cubic meters of logs annually, he said.It is also looking for ways to reduce the electricity consumption of the 300,000 base stations in the company&#39;s network, he said.He may well have walked by Ericsson&#39;s answer to that problem on his way into the show. On the central avenue leading through the showground, the company had erected a scale model of a transmission tower that uses up to 50 percent less energy than standard towers.Traditional transmission towers place the power amplifiers and other electronics in a cabin on the ground, with antennas at the top of a steel structure. However, around half the signal power is lost in the cables between amplifier and antenna, and more power still is used by air-conditioning units to stop the equipment in the cabin from overheating.Ericsson&#39;s idea is to put all the electronics near the top of a concrete tube 40 meters high, with air vents near the top and bottom. This puts the amplifiers near the antennas, so less energy is lost in cables. The tower acts like a chimney, the rising current of air cooling the electronics with no need for fans or air conditioning.The tower is designed for hot countries and, with a few modifications, can operate without an external electricity supply. In sunny zones the tower can be clad in solar panels, with batteries allowing the base station to run through the night kept cool in a well 4 meters below ground.So far, Ericsson has built only one such tower, near its headquarters in Kista, Sweden. The company is looking for local manufacturing partners in countries that might use the design, representatives said.