Instant-On Computers

Everyone is frustrated daily with the time it takes for a computer to start up. This is the reason I personally don’t turn my desktop off at night. However, a new scientific breakthrough, adding a ferroelectric capability to silicon, might make the science fiction “instant-on computer” into science fact. The lead researcher, Daniel Schlom, says “If ferroelectric transistors are ever realized, they can be turned off and back on instantly — no reboot, no 30-second wait, no nothing.” Not only could ferroelectric transistors make things turn off and on faster, but they could greatly increase the speed of peripheral devices such as flash drives. This applies to Informatics because they are using technology to improve a problem with today’s computers, the horrendous startup and shutdown times. They’ve used information gathered from almost a half century of research on this subject to add a property to silicon that had never been done before.

I think this technology is great; as mentioned before, I don’t shut down my computer most nights just so I can avoid having to wait 3-5 minutes for it to boot up, whereas when it’s in sleep mode it is ready to use in under 5 seconds. If there was a computer that could go from fully off to ready to compute in the same time as coming back from sleep, I’d buy it right away.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/04/instant-on-comp/