Intel moves to free gadgets from cables

San Francisco: Intel has made progress in a technology that could lead to the wireless recharging of gadgets and the end of the power-cord spaghetti behind electronic devices.

It says it has increased the efficiency of a technique for wirelessly powering consumer gadgets and computers, a development that could allow a person to simply place a device on a countertop to power it. It could bring the consumer electronics industry a step closer to a world without wires.

The chipmaker plans to demonstrate the use of a magnetic field to broadcast up to 60 watts of power two to three feet. It says it can do that losing only 25 per cent of the power in transmission.

"Something like this technology could be embedded in tables and work surfaces," said Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer, "so as soon as you put down an appropriately equipped device it would immediately begin drawing power."

Forum

The presentation is part of the company's Intel Developer Forum, a series of events in San Francisco to showcase new technologies in personal computing and related consumer technologies.

The research project, which is being led by Joshua Smith, an Intel researcher at a company laboratory in Seattle, builds on the work of the Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology physicist Marin Soljacic, who pioneered the idea of wirelessly transmitting power using resonant magnetic fields.

The MIT group refers to the idea as WiTricity. Both the MIT group and the Intel researchers are exploring a phenomenon known as "resonant induction," making it possible to transmit power without wires.