The green nano touch

No it’s not a secret potion to turn everything Irish. Like we nearly did to America in the last century!

The Green Touch Initiative

No, the Green Touch Initiative is a consortium of leading industry players, research institutions and non-governmental organizations to define the challenge, identify solutions and develop solutions with the goal to deliver the architecture, specifications, roadmap, and demonstrations of key components needed to reduce ICT energy consumption per user by a factor of 1,000 from current levels within five years.

IMEC is to take part in the Green Touch Initiative, the consortium initiated by Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent. The Green Touch Initiative is committed to inventing the technologies that will be at the heart of the next generation of sustainable networks. The consortium has set itself the goal of creating technologies necessary to achieve a 1000 fold improvement in the future power consumption of the Internet and other communication networks (e.g. corporate networks) by 2015.

To achieve its ambitious target of setting a reference architecture and demonstrating key components of the next generation of sustainable ICT networks, the consortium will leverage the expertise of leading industrial research groups, academia, and service providers, and will collaborate in pioneering new technologies and fundamentally redesigning the current ICT networks.

Imec, as one of the world centers-of-excellence in green radio technology, intends to bring its wireless communication expertise to the consortium. Imec’s green radio R&D program focuses on low power and low cost radio technology solutions. The R&D centre has an excellent track record on low power reconfigurable radio technologies, power optimization through embedded intelligence and environment-aware cognitive solutions, mm-wave high-throughput wireless communication for Gigabit communication at short distances, and ultra-low power wireless communication in the context of personal sensor networks. Moreover, in the framework of its recently launched INSITE program, imec studies the impact of new process technologies on circuits, addressing the increasing need in the industry towards more application-specific technology solutions to reach ambitious targets as set forward by the Green Touch Initiative.

“By joining the Green Touch Initiative, imec teams up with industrial and academic leaders in ICT R&D to solve one of the grand challenges our world faces: to provide sustainable yet ubiquitous connectivity for everyone and everything at an energy consumption which approaches the theoretical limits”, said Luc Van den hove, imec’s Chief Executive Officer, continuing that “imec is proud it can contribute its renowned expertise to this important initiative”.

imec, headquartered in Leuven (B), performs world-leading research in nano-electronics. imec leverages its scientific knowledge with the innovative power of its global partnerships in ICT, healthcare and energy. imec delivers industry-relevant technology solutions. In a unique high-tech environment, its international top talent is committed to providing the building blocks for a better life in a sustainable society.