One step closer to smarter power supplies: Green Plug inks deals with chip supplier, OEM

By | December 29, 2009, 5:57am PST

Summary: Green Plug teams up with chip maker Imagination Technologies, opening the door to support in all sorts of consumer electronics devices.

Green Plug, which has been evangelizing technology that enables smarter, more universal power adapters, has found two advocates for its technology.

The company has struck deals with Imagination Technologies, which manufactures system-on-chip technology, and one of Imagination’s customers, PURE. According to Green Plug, Imagination plans to include the Greentalk digital power protocol and Greenwire physical layer technology within its core products, which are used in things like in-car entertainment systems, game consoles, set-top boxes and mobile devices. PURE, a maker of digital radios, plans to enable the Green Plug functions in some of its products and it plans to introduce a smart power adapter along those lines.

The big push by Green Plug isn’t just that adapters can support more than one type of device, it’s that devices can be charged more intelligently. Greentalk monitors the charging process so that when something is at full charge, it stops delivering power to the device. Green Plug devices under development are also being designed to allow multiple gadgets to be charged simultaneously.

The idea behind making Green Plug’s intellectual property native in controller chips or power management systems is to help cut costs.

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Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues.

Disclosure

Heather Clancy

Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I am also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I am covering in my blog.

Biography

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll.

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