Will battery tech ever catch up to CPU?

[Durango_Boy]

I see the same thing happening with modern phones that happened to laptops several years ago.

The processor speeds kept going up and up, screen resolutions getting better and better, and battery life kept getting worse and worse.

Battery tech on these devices simply cannot fuel the progress we see on these phones.

I read a few days ago that a company is putting together a 1.5 Gig processor for phones. That's amazing and all, but if most users of Snapdragon phones can barely get a day's use without recharging then where will someone stand with 50% more processing power? 50% less battery life...again?

I'm excited like everyone else, bigger and faster is always better...but battery tech needs to seriously improve.

 

[LtKen]

Likely not. The three limiting factors for processor design have and likely always will be cost, heat, and power use.

 

[madmacabre]

Phone makers will have to improve there speed AND energy consumption. They seem to be falling behind on the second part.

 

[jroc]

I know with the Xbox 360, they started using chips that used less power, which in turn generated less heat. 90nm vs. 65nm. The current 360's use 65nm. Right now the current phones (I'm just talking about the Moto Droid and the Inc.) use 65nm. The newer phones are supposed to use 45nm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware Look at the motherboards, list of revisions.

Same thing for recent PC chips too. When they started using 45nm technology, it seriously had me wanting to try my first quad core PC.

I asked about this in the Droid 2 Prelease Thread. If it applies to phones the same way it applies to the 360 and PC chips, that should mean less power used and heat. That should help with battery life.

I think as long as that xxnm number can get lower, we should see some differences in battery life. And I'm not trying to start a Droid vs. Inc battle here, but I dont get why HTC didnt use a chip with 45nm technology for the Inc. The Droid was already out using 65nm, they shoulda went for better internals ALL AROUND. Which makes me think that HTC has something else in store in the near future: maybe an Inc. 2?

 

[BzB]

actually i think we'll see both. we'll have faster processors with lower power consumption (like the low voltage kernels already available for rooted droids) and processors will also get more efficient. battery tech may not progress as quickly as processor tech in terms of longer lasting cells, but we may see manufacturers start packaging higher capacity batteries in smaller sizes (like the slim extended batteries).

i think/hope manufacturers will also start making decisions to package higher capacity batteries as stock equipment rather than leaving that for the aftermarket. although that may result in higher sale prices to the consumer.

 

[SeattleUser]

The solution is

a more efficient CPU and better written code. Object oriented programming makes it easy to code, but leads to bloated executables.

 

[Darkseider]

Yes. There is a very exciting new battery technology on the horizon called Lithium-Sulfide. Currently it can achieve 3x to 4x the capacity of Lithium Polymer batteries. Unfortunately it is probably still a year or two away from mass commercial use but it is coming.

 

[jroc]

Well there you go: better battery technology AND processors using less power and heat.

It should be a match made in heaven in the near future.

 

[clucernoni]

It seems to me that processors advance continually while battery technology takes leaps every few years. Most phones use the same battery until a better technology comes out, whereas the processors in them will get better and better every few months (case in point the droid to nexus one).

 

[LtKen]

Battery life has never really matched performance needs, especially since handheld devices started doing more than making calls or telling us what time it was. I find it so hard to believe that this trend will change anytime in the near future.

Energy storage has been the limiting factor in most technology since we had to figure out how to store energy. We still use gasoline to power our cars because there's no battery anywhere that can store a comparable amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline.

Chemical batteries will always lag the power consumption requirements. If there is a battery breakthrough in the next decade, it will likely come from capacitor and nanotube technology.

I cant cite any of this, but I've taken my share of EE courses and read countless technical journals and articles in the last 6 years, and this is my strong opinion.