Laptops are essentially gateways to all things online. These devices have become an indispensable part of our life. For instance, it follows you from home to office and from conferences to coffee shops and back. However, like humans they exhaust at the end of the day. So, efforts are always underway to maximize the battery power by building machines with a higher capacity. That’s where Microsoft takes a departure from the normal behavior and works on building smarter batteries. Microsoft working on a new type of battery for laptops!
Microsoft software-defined battery system
The latest entry to Microsoft Research blog suggests that a laptop battery system capable of extending the battery life could be on the anvil. The proposal for building the smarter batteries come in the backdrop of creating a system running on a hot technology called ‘Machine Learning’. It is a kind of technology that will enable laptop batteries to understand or learn user’s habits so it can figure out how to extend battery life based on how its user is using the device.
The machine learning technique will employ a system that will use different sorts of existing batteries, working in tandem with a smartly developed software, to keep them charged more than current standards. The software-defined battery system will be a single blend of different sorts of batteries, optimized for different tasks, into one computer. It will use the operating system to figure out whether the user is working with an application that heavily relies on power or a simple application and thereby switch you to the the most efficient battery for that task.
Example, If you’re playing a game, your OS could detect it via software-defined battery system and help you shift to a more short-lived battery with lots of power.
The solution proposed by the trio – Bodhi Priyantha, Ranveer Chandra and Anirudh Badam working with colleagues from Academia is still in the proto-type phase and could take years before it becomes a reality. Nevertheless, the research holds promises.
