This sounds as bizarre as turning water into wine. Wine is the keyword in this story, too.
Genevieve Bell, Intel fellow, did the unthinkable at the recently-held Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, USA. By pouring a liquid, wine specifically, into her circuitry board, she powered up a chip. Rather than things going pop, the wine sparked life into the chip, acting as a battery source. Straight out of Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
Reports that came in from the conference said red wine was used as a power source for the chip, smaller than Quark. Intel apparently is working on such small, power driven chips, some of which can even be juiced up by our body heat.
A report in ComputerWorld spoke of how once the red wine hit the metal, the microprocessor on a circuit board powered up. The low-power 
microprocessor then ran a graphics program on a computer with an e-ink display. The wine glass had two electrodes that reacted with the acetic acid in red wine to produce the current.
This apparently is one of the many projects in the works at Intel’s “New Devices” group, which is investigating business opportunities in the emerging markets of the “Internet of things” and wearable devices.
The issue is that whatever Intel showed is still in prototype phase, but it shows some things to come. Ubiqutos computing is now known as the Internet of things and Intel wants a big chunk of this low margin market that is all about high volumes.
At the forum meet, Dr Bell thanked her Australian outback upbringing for possibly being the only Intel executive who knew how to get drinkable water out of a frog. And now, this.
(Image for representational purposes only.)
Image Credit: Intel
