Take the expressway to go greener

Microelectronics has evolved to save power. In fact, semiconductor technology has been in the lead in the reduction of power consumption, by facilitating energy monitoring, and the controlling and managing of energy consumption. The key product in this advance has been a less-commonly-known semiconductor device called the microcontroller. That the MCU uses very little power was demonstrated for the first time by Renesas in 2006, by operating a low-power MCU from the electricity generated by 4 lemons! Subseqently, in 2011, we succeeded in operating our latest low-power MCU for 3 hours and 45 minutes using one lemon as a power source. Yet, in the future, MCUs must evolve further to save power, in widespread applications including the "energy harvesting" environment.