I don't post here very often, but this time I couldn't handle this. (Maybe I should drink less coffee). There was probably some paper at that uni, talking about an incremental improvement in frequency divider design. Ok, cool ... we may or may not see in in a PLL chip in a few years. But the news release (TFA) and RP's writeup are rubbish. Actually, after a bit of Googling, it's all over the net. Next thing I expect, my PHB will ask me to change my totaly unrelated design to use ILFD. My signature notwithstanding, I'll try to pick out some of the c***p, and put some actual information in. BTW, I design 3G mobile terminal circuitry full time. And yes, I am an arrogant SOB. That doesn't make me wrong.

"...But now, researchers of the University of Rochester have developed a wireless chip that needs ten times less power [GC] than current designs."

So far so good.

The new chip relies on a technology named injection locked frequency divider (ILFD) which dramatically reduces the time needed to check for transmission frequencies which are performed several billion times per second by your current phone.

This statement is wrong 2 times. First of all, the time needed to check for transmission frequencies depends on PLL settling time. Nothing to do with divider technology. Even broader scope, it is a rare occurence in 3G that the phone needs to change RF frequency. It's WCDMA, so all cells from a given operator transmit on the same channel. Secondly, tthe checking for transmission does NOT occur "several billion times per second". The RF carrier frequency is several billion cycles per second (ie several GHz). But the carrier frequency is changed on every 10ms roughly, even when it needs to happen. That's 100 times per second. GSM is different, as it does frequency hopping normally, but that doesn't change the point: nothing to do with divider technology.

The new chip uses five transistors and can perform divisions by 3 instead of only 2 by previous circuits

OK, agreed. Anyway, who gives a f**k. A modern PLL chip has a programmable divider, settable from 3 to several thousand. Yes, 3, because it is different technology.

..., allowing a perfect communication between two phones communicating at 2.0001 and 2.0002 gigahertz respectively.

That's not how mobile phones work. Mobiles establish connection with the cell (base station), then remain frequency locked to it, to compensate for temperature dependant frequency variation of their reference reference crystal oscillators - and Doppler shift, if they are moving. A "perfect" communication hardly ever depends on this. And frequency locking does not happen via changing PLL settings in this case anyway - too coarse steps, so other techniques are used.

Anyway, as other people posted already, the frequency synthesizer is not significant contributor to mobile terminal power consumption. Even old PLL chips only use a few milliamps

The ILFD technology seems to be good for building efficient frequency dividers at higher microwave frequencies. That will probably not affect current mobile phones anyway, because all the current systems work around 1-2GHz. Higher up, it's difficult to achieve coverage. Again, other people already pointed this out.

If you want real news in this area, go to sites like this, or this. Slashdot's editorial quality has degraded in the last few years so much that I am thinking about deleting it from my bookmarks.