Like many corporations, semiconductor giant Intel is targeting a portion of its annual research budget at technological advances that improve the environment. An example of this is Intel's Platform Power Management, a collection of power management techniques aimed at improving computer performance at dramatically reduced levels of power consumption. The power management technologies operate by continually monitoring changes in a computer's operation and then reducing power -- or turning it off altogether -- in portions of the system not in use. Intel says early demonstrations of the project have shown power savings of more than 30% when a system is idle or slightly active. Intel researchers are working to improve the power savings even when the computer is in heavy use.
The Platform Power Management is one of dozens of research projects Intel showed during a mid-June demonstration event. Other areas in which the company is investing research dollars include visual computing, wireless and healthcare technologies.
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