Researchers at the University of Idaho say they've created a computer chip more powerful than 17,000 Intel quad-core processors that runs on 0.03 percent of the power those chips would require.

The chip will be used on NASA's developing Geostationary Synthetic Thinned Aperture Radiometer (GeoSTAR) project, which will observe hurricanes and other severe storms in the U.S. It is the latest in a series of microprocessors created for NASA by the Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research (CAMBR), located in Post Falls.

"We were racing against the clock and had to use technology we've never used before to get the chip completed, but that's our job," says Sterling Whitaker, who led the team of computer engineers that included Lowell Miles and Laura Davis.

The chip is responsible for correlating 588 antennas in real time. This means the team had to ensure it fit with the system of electronics featuring many inputs and outputs without crossing any data streams.

It also had to run on 120 watts of power—barely more than a light bulb.

To achieve these goals, the team used two technologies new to CAMBR. One was a packaging system designed to deliver power throughout the chip via a number of half-spheres spaced evenly across its surface. The second was utilizing an IBM fabrication facility capable of creating circuits 90 nanometers thick—about the width of a human hair.

Though the technology has been used in commercial electronics for some time, it hadn't been made resistant to radiation, which is required for operations in space. Whitaker, however, pioneered a new technology that takes advantage of IBM's manufacturing process. The technology is promising enough to have earned $1.6 million of support recently from a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/Space and Naval Warfare research program.

University of Idaho researchers attract nearly $100 million in research grants and contracts each year.

The university is the only institution in the state to have earned the prestigious Carnegie Foundation ranking for high research activity.