Less Power to the People Intel spec calls for desktops to get more sleep By Stephen Ohr, EETimes Burlingame, Calif. -- Intel wants to save power. Under its Power Supply '98 specification, new-generation PCs would use 60 percent less electricity. Introduced at the first Intel Developers Forum here last week, PS'98 asks vendors to take power-saving cues from current portable computers. The spec urges a sleep mode that would limit power output to less than 5 W, the minimum needed to retain DRAM and some selected communications devices. It asks power-supply makers--"silver box" suppliers like Astec and Delta--to build dual-mode supplies that would provide sleep or standby modes for both 5- and 3.3-V lines. The sleep mode, Intel said, keeps DRAM and some PCI bus devices awake but puts almost everything else on the motherboard to sleep. Altough the spec has not been formally released, Intel said that Astec and Delta already have bought in. Last week's recommendations, now labeled Version 0.5, are the latest in a series from Intel's Platform Architecture Labs (PAL), an advisory group offering technical recommendations to system developers on the best ways to meet the often-divergent demands of users, regulatory agencies, operating-system developers and hardware designers. PS'98 is part of a broad power-management guideline now under construction. The guideline also includes the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification introduced in December. ACPI defines sleep and standby modes for the motherboard and identifies hardware and software triggers to initiate or end those states. Combined with an ACPI-enabled operating system such as Microsoft's OnNow, PS'98 would create what Intel calls "a truly intelligent management platform." (Next article) (c) 1997 CMP Media, Inc [This article comes from EE Times in a joint cooperative effort with the Motley Fool. For more articles like it, please look at Fool's Gold every weekend or simply go to the Fool's Gold Mine and page through our back issues, which all have clever and cool EE Times articles in them.]

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