With a lot of electronics spending a large amount of its time in standby mode. Manufacturers have been searching for ways to reduce the amount of power used when an electronic device is in standby, for example both LCD HDTV’s and home cinema equipment spends a lot of time in standby mode waiting to be turned on.

It now looks like NEC and Rohm have achieved a break through and developed chips that radically reduce power use during stand by mode. They have done this by making a chip that is non volatile – in layman’s terms this means when you switch them back on they continue from where the power was turned off. Rohm is shipping chips now and the first products using this new technology are expected by the end of the year.

Tadahiko Sugibayashi, from  the Devices Platform Research Laboratories at NEC says

“We’ll be able to cut dissipation for digital consumer electronics in the standby mode to just a few percent of what it is now.” In terms of annual electricity cost, he adds, “That could add up to hundreds of millions of yen in savings in Japan alone.” And of course the equipment would be able to return from standby to normal operating mode instantaneously.”

A source at Rohm commented

“Normally-off equipment will become possible, turning itself on only when power is needed.” In 2008 Rohm demonstrated its microprocessor prototype in normally-off operation, slashing dissipation by 70% from conventional designs. Rohm explains: “This technology has enormous potential in applications such as games, where the system is usually sitting and waiting for player input.”

With the current interest in reducing greenhouse emissions wide spread use of these technologies could help reduce the energy bills and CO2 emissions of the average home.