Modern digital chips operate are two-state machines, working only with 0s and 1s. These states are normally electric currents/charge, where some value below a (pre-determined) threshold (say 3 Volts) would be a 0, and above would be a 1. Chips spend a lot of energy ensuring that a 0-state is indeed a 0-state (and not a 1-state with a large negative error in the voltage), and vice-versa. For handheld devices (PDAs, MP3 players) that run on batteries/solar-power, this is a problem, because a) efficient power management allows such devices to run for longer time, and b) smaller devices have problems dissipating the excess heat.

PCMOS based on the PBITS framework (Courtesy: Georgia-TechDr. Krishna Palem of Georgia Tech has now produced a device that does not guarantee an exact 0 or a 1. Instead, the device makes sure that the probability that the bit is a 0 (or a 1) is at least p (0≤p≤1, where p=0: the bit is definitely not 0, p=1: the bit is definitely not 1).
This PBITs model is now backed by measurements of an actual probabilistic CMOS device which the researchers call PCMOS (Probabilistic Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor). Supported by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research team estimates that 100-fold improvements are possible to the energy consumed and performance of complex applications such as neural networks, which are used for pattern recognition and other applications such as spoken alphabet recognition programs used on cell phones.
According to the vice-president of Research Operations (Dr. Ralph K. Cavin III) at Semiconductor Research Corporation, The most striking thing about the work is the idea that we can utilize a phenomena normally viewed as unwanted (noise on the chip) as a vehicle to address an important and limiting problem (reducing heat dissipation). There is something powerful and appealing about turning a problem into a feature!