Researchers from the Green IC research group at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have invented a low-cost, no-battery wake-up timer in the form of an on-chip circuit that significantly reduces power consumption of silicon chips for Internet of Things (IoT) sensor nodes. The novel wake-up timer by the NUS team demonstrates for the first time the achievement of power consumption down to true picoWatt range (1 billion times lower than a smart watch).