I have often recharged my batteries with a decent glass of wine but now it appears that wine is actually powering a new processor at Intel!
It was developed by Intel’s Interaction and Experience Research Director Genevieve Bell and the processor is powered by a glass of red wine with two electrodes in it that react with the acetic acid in the wine to produce a current.
The wine provided enough power to allow a development board to transmit data and manipulate an image on screen.
Bell wanted to demonstrate that even a tiny amount of power could run Intel silicon and revealed the wine powered prototype at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Bell said:
‘Some people turn water into wine, here at Intel we’re turning wine into electricity.’
Bell explained that the wine project is an example of the kind of innovation that will be necessary for further progress in mobile devices:
‘It’s possible to start to imagine a world of incredibly low power but also with high performance, which will help unburden us, help us do things that are remarkable and gives the ability to power things like constant sensing, communication, and computing – all of which are necessary for our mobile future.’
Intel believes these ultra low power chips are the future, especially when it comes to connecting people in less developed countries.
Intel won’t be rolling out wine powered processors in the near future as it says that the technology is still years from any kind of practical application but it’s interesting to see that wine powers more than you think! Watts the future hold for wine? Lol.