Universal Soldiers
Presumably DARPA is trying to avoid the problem of overheating that affected the prototype so-called "Universal Soldiers", as vividly shown in that excellent '90s documentary of the same name
Boffins working at MIT and Texas Instruments believe they're on the road to new chip designs which consume significantly less power, promising a revolution in many fields of electronics. The research was funded by DARPA*, the US warboffinry bureau which considers that the only place for a walking tour is the wild side. The …
The US newspaper I first read this article in didn't even mention military applications, and you spend most of the article on that and almost none on the medical and environmental possibilities. Putting the two together _almost_ gives a reasonable picture of the potential effect of this technology.
"...could that produce an over-voltage situation and blow out the chip?"
Preventing overvoltage to reach the chip is a trivial affair consisting of about a dozen off-the-shelf electronics components. Alternatively, if you just want to prevent toasting the chip without ensuring it keeps running, say "fuse."