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Google has invested US$10 million in BrightSource as part of the Internet firms’s RE>C initiative. According to news.com and ValleyWag, BrightSource builds solar thermal facilities and sells the generated electricity to commercial customers and electricity. The generation system is cost-effective during peak periods of the day.

Google’s data center use large quantities of electricity, so Google.org has been awarding grants to suppliers of renewable energy technologies such as solar, thermal and wind.

Google also announced today that it is hiring a Head of Renewable Energy to supervise the company’s research & development programs. The company already invested in eSolar and Makani Power - see this Google web page more details and links.

Cnet has a report on a cellular base station that can switch among wind, solar and diesel generators. This Gizmodo article has a few more details about E-site.

It’s an interesting concept that would be useful in developing countries. In Africa, diesel generators are often used to provide coverage. A cleaner alternative would be welcome.

As I pointed out on 29 March 2008, power isn’t the only problem that mobile phone carriers face in developing countries. Terrorists, insurgents, and other groups may target cellular base stations to knock out coverage or make a political statement. On the other hand, these same groups often rely on mobile phones.

E-sites also make sense for Hawaii. Oahu has good mobile phone coverage, but there are many parts of this island and the neighbor islands that are served by one carrier, if coverage is even available. Adding wind and solar power generation capabilities to existing base stations can also improve reliability during brownouts, blackouts, and seismic events. The wind and solar generators can be used to charge backup batteries, or to provide primary power.

Thirteen months ago, Intel showed off a prototype CPU with EIGHTY cores on the same piece of silicon. It uses about as much electricity as a traditional desktop CPU. This news.com article has some information:

Intel used 100 million transistors on the chip, which measures 275 millimeters squared. By comparison, its Core 2 Duo chip uses 291 million transistors and measures 143 millimeters squared.

The hard part of the design isn’t putting the cores on the same die. The chips have to talk with each other. Routers on the silicon die help assign computations to individual chips, and move finished computations to neighboring chips.

It’s a prototype, so the chips are very basic. It’s incompatible with Intel’s x86 platform. Writing software for a multi-core CPU is difficult, so the demonstrations are very limited. The chips need their own RAM, because external RAM modules like those used in personal computers won’t work. Wikipedia’s article on multicore processors is a good read, and the reference list is helpful.

Intel has a web page about the project, and here’s two YouTube videos with more details.

As we close out a week of hardware-related posts on this blog, here’s an article from ScienCentral about a 12-year old boy who calls himself “Magneto Man”. Joseph Falciatano III of Richland, NY claims that his mere presence can disrupt electronic devices, including video games and computers. The link above has more details, including a video interview with teachers, the boy and his father. 

I’m a bit skeptical about this report, but one detail is interesting: when Joe is grounded, the effect disappears. That actually makes sense. When repairing a computer, it’s a good idea to wear an anti-static wrist strap, and to connect the strap to a fixed piece of metal. Some electronics workbenches include a long metal strip for that purpose.

I have a metal desk in my office, so I touch the desk and ground myself after I walk across the carpet.

Thanks to Engadget for the link.

From ChipChick and Engadget comes information on a solar-powered Bluetooth headset. Bluetooth headsets need a battery to power the radio, but it’s usually a low-wattage affair. The Iqua Sun 603 uses a small solar panel that on the exterior side of the headset to trickle charge the battery. It looks like an ideal headset for the sunny tropics, but it’s not available yet in the USA. Price is £40 in the UK.

My current headset is the Jawbone. It’s not solar-powered – the charger uses a proprietary cable that has a USB jack on one end and the headset plug on the other. The Jawbone’s best feature is sound quality. It does a very nice job of eliminating background noise in the user’s vicinity. It looks good, too. I’ve seen some really ugly headsets in the last couple of years.