Today, imec announces that
it will take part in the Green Touch Initiative, a new 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”.