Toshiba mobile RAM uses prediction, adaptation to cut power use by up to 85 percent

@ 2013/02/25
RAM remains one of the principal drains on a smartphone's battery: it's almost always in use, and it saps power even when its host device is idle in a pocket. Toshiba hasn't eliminated that demand entirely, but its new SRAM (not yet pictured here) is intelligent enough to cut a lot of the waste. The memory can better predict what power it's going to need while it's active, and includes a smarter retention circuit that occasionally wakes up to tweak buffer size while it's on standby. While these sound all too abstract, they should lead to some very tangible gains. Toshiba estimates that the SRAM chews up 27 percent less power when live, and 85 percent less when it's just waiting for action. The company doesn't yet know when the RAM will reach finished devices, but we're hoping it's soon when even mainstream phones like the Optimus F7 will ship with 2GB of RAM; that energy draw isn't going down all by itself.

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