Intel unveils wine-powered processor 









American chipmaker Intel unveiled a processor powered by wine at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this week.

Dr Genevieve Bell has created a wine-powered processor

IT website The Register reports that the processor is the brainchild of Intel’s in-house anthropologist, Dr Genevieve Bell.

The low-powered processor is powered by a glass of red wine with two electrodes in it that react with the acetic acid in the wine to produce a current.

Australian-born Bell, director of Intel’s interaction and experience research, has been studying the problem of power in mobile computing.

While people have been making potato batteries for years, Bell wanted to demonstrate that even a tiny amount of power could run Intel silicon.

“Some people turn water into wine, here at Intel we’re turning wine into electricity,” Bell told The Register.

“It’s possible to start to imagine a world of incredibly low power but also with high performance, which will help unburden us and gives us the ability to power things like computing,” she added.

While a wine-powered processor is a long way off from hitting the shelves, Bell believes such innovations will be key to meeting the needs of the world’s 4.4 billion mobile phone users.