Power Play to create a network of wireless nodes, what they call picoradio, that run advanced information systems, use an absolute bare minimum of energy, and cost next to nothing.
"Pico" is a prefix that means "one trillionth," and while it doesn't describe the dimensions of the system, it conjures Rabaey's target of creating a network that can go as far as possible on as little as possible. "The questions we've been asking are, how low can we go? What is the bottom limit in terms of power dissipation for the wireless world?" says Rabaey, who teaches electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley and heads the picoradio project at the center, an industry and government funded research group that focuses on design issues for next generation wireless devices.