2. Device News
• Manipulating light at will
• Indium-free transparent electronics
– Crucial to display technologies, solar panels, LED
lighting
• Improvements in Quantum Logic circuits
• IBM Cognitive Computing chip
• Diamond circuits for extreme environments
5. Neurosynaptic chips
• Artificial biology inspired chips
– Integrated memory (replicated synapses)
– Computation (replicated neurons)
• Working prototype chips
– 256 neurons
– Up to 262,144 programmable synapses
• Seeks on chip network of lightweight cores
6. Communication
• Ground based GPS with centimeter resolution
– Small ground based transmitters to add resolution
– Not blocked so easily as GPS
• Useable even inside mines
• Faster downloads by combining signals form
several sources.
– New kind of wireless network can have 1000
times more data in same amount of spectrum
8. Nanotech Device News
• Electronic circuits made of nanowire
– Can be molded to any type of surfac
• Practical Quantum Wire
– From DNA strands that select nanotubes
• Isolated Optical Waveguides
– Isolation of optical signals on silicon
– More dependable faster and more numerous
connections
Manipulating light.http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/manipulating-light-at-will.htmlhttp://www.pratt.duke.edu/Duke_prl_light_manipulationThe breakthrough revolves around a novel man-made structure known as a metamaterial. These exotic composite materials are not so much a single substance, but an entire structure that can be engineered to exhibit properties not readily found in nature. The structure used in these experiments resembles a miniature set of tan Venetian blinds.Quantum circuitshttp://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/dramatic-simplification-paves-way-for.htmlDr Xiao-Qi Zhou and colleagues at the University of Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics and the University of Queensland, Australia, have shown that controlled can be dramatically simplified compared to the standard approach. The researchers believe their technique will find applications across quantum information technologies, including precision measurement, simulation of complex systems, and ultimately a quantum computer — a powerful type of computer that uses quantum bits (qubits) rather than the conventional bits used in today's computers.A major obstacle for realizing a quantum computer is the complexity of the quantum circuits required. As with conventional computers, quantum algorithms are constructed from a small number of elementary logic operations. Controlled operations are at the heart of the majority of important quantum algorithms. The traditional method to realize controlled operations is to decompose them into the elementary logic gate set. However, this decomposition is very complex and prohibits the realization of even small-scale quantum circuits.The researchers now show a completely new way to approach this problem. "By using an extra degree of freedom of quantum particles, we can realize the control operation in a novel way. We have constructed several controlled operations using this method," said Dr Xiao-Qi Zhou, research fellow working on this project, "This will significantly reduce the complexity of the circuits for quantum computing."See-Through Electronicshttp://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/ice-university-develops-indium-free.htmlThe lab of Rice chemist James Tour lab has created thin films that could revolutionize touch-screen displays, solar panels and LED lighting.Flexible, see-through video screens may be the "killer app" that finally puts graphene -- the highly touted single-atom-thick form of carbon -- into the commercial spotlight once and for all, Tour said. Combined with other flexible, transparent electronic components being developed at Rice and elsewhere, the breakthrough could lead to computers that wrap around the wrist and solar cells that wrap around just about anything.Diamond circuitshttp://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/designing-diamond-circuits-for-extreme.htmlA team of electrical engineers at Vanderbilt University has developed all the basic components needed to create microelectronic devices out of thin films of nanodiamond. They have created diamond versions of transistors and, most recently, logical gates, which are a key element in computers.“Diamond-based devices have the potential to operate at higher speeds and require less power than silicon-based devices,” Research Professor of Electrical Engineering Jimmy Davidson said.Davidson was quick to point out that even though their design uses diamond film, it is not exorbitantly expensive. The devices are so small that about one billion of them can be fabricated from one carat of diamond. The films are made from hydrogen and methane using a method called chemical vapor deposition that is widely used in the microelectronics industry for other purposes. This deposited form of diamond is less than one-thousandth the cost of “jewelry” diamond, which has made it inexpensive enough so that companies are putting diamond coatings on tools, cookware and other industrial products. The nanodiamond circuits are a hybrid of old fashioned vacuum tubes and modern solid-state microelectronics and combine some of the best qualities of both technologies.Nanodiamond devices consist of a thin film of nanodiamond that is laid down on a layer of silicon dioxide. Much as they do in vacuum tubes, the electrons move through vacuum between the nanodiamond components, instead of flowing through solid material the way they do in normal microelectronic devices. As a result, they require vacuum packaging to operate.The design is also largely immune to radiation damage. Cognitive computingIn a sharp departure from traditional concepts in designing and building computers, IBM’s first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems, such as the brain, through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing.
Combined with other flexible, transparent electronic components being developed at Rice and elsewhere, the breakthrough could lead to computers that wrap around the wrist and solar cells that wrap around just about anythingCross-section schematic of process flow. A1-A4: Preparation of the metal grid on a transparent substrate. A1: Deposition of metal film (Metal 1) and photoresist on transparent substrate. A2: Photolithography patterning of the grid structure. A3: Wet-etching of the metal film. A4: Removal of the photoresist. B1-B4: Graphene growth using a solid carbon source (PMMA) 2. B1: Spin-coating PMMA on a copper foil (Metal 2). B2: Growing graphene film using solid carbon source. B3: Spin-coating a PMMA sacrificial layer on graphene. B4: Wetetching of the copper foil. AB1-AB2: assemble hybrid electrode. AB1: Transferring graphene on metal grid structure. AB2: Removal of PMMA sacrificial layer by dissolution in acetone.
Called cognitive computers, systems built with these chips won’t be programmed the same way traditional computers are today. Rather, cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember – and learn from – the outcomes, mimicking the brains structural and synaptic plasticity.To do this, IBM is combining principles from nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing as part of a multi-year cognitive computing initiative. The company and its university collaborators also announced they have been awarded approximately $21 million in new funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for Phase 2 of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project. The goal of SyNAPSE is to create a system that not only analyzes complex information from multiple sensory modalities at once, but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with its environment – all while rivaling the brain’s compact size and low power usage. The IBM team has already successfully completed Phases 0 and 1. “This is a major initiative to move beyond the von Neumann paradigm that has been ruling computer architecture for more than half a century,” said DharmendraModha, project leader for IBM Research. “Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture. These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government.”
While they contain no biological elements, IBM’s first cognitive computing prototype chips use digital silicon circuits inspired by neurobiology to make up what is referred to as a “neurosynaptic core” with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons). IBM has two working prototype designs. Both cores were fabricated in 45 nm SOI-CMOS and contain 256 neurons. One core contains 262,144 programmable synapses and the other contains 65,536 learning synapses. The IBM team has successfully demonstrated simple applications like navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification.IBM’s overarching cognitive computing architecture is an on-chip network of light-weight cores, creating a single integrated system of hardware and software. This architecture represents a critical shift away from traditional von Neumann computing to a potentially more power-efficient architecture that has no set programming, integrates memory with processor, and mimics the brain’s event-driven, distributed and parallel processing. IBM’s long-term goal is to build a chip system with ten billion neurons and hundred trillion synapses, while consuming merely one kilowatt of power and occupying less than two liters of volume.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/ground-based-gps-mimicing-for.htmlSmall ground-based transmitters that mimic GPS satellites help receivers find their position with high accuracy. A new location technology accurate to a few centimeters will refine those services and unlock another wave of novel ideas, claims Australian company Locata. The company's technology can work alongside GPS to provide superaccurate positioning or fill in the gaps in places where GPS signals are blocked.The technology is already being used to track munitions on the U.S. Air Force's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where an upgraded system will soon cover an area of 6,474 square kilometers. The Boddington gold mine in Western Australia is using Locata's technology to position digging and drilling equipment with high accuracy. It is a convenient alternative to manually surveying the insides of the deep opencast mine, the walls of which block GPS signals. Next month, Locata will release information that will allow other companies to manufacture LocataLites and receivers, a move intended to see the technology added to devices that already use GPS signals. "It's like the early days of GPS," says Gambale. "The real explosion will happen when there are chip-scale receivers that can fit into your pocket.”Ultimately, this could mean smart phones that know their location with remarkable accuracy, enabling apps such as augmented reality to be much more powerful. Before that, however, construction sites, warehouses, and factories will likely benefit. Tracking goods and machines with high accuracy can enable greater use of robotics and automation.Mulit-signal wirelessThe approach is known as DIDO, for distributed input distributed output, and is currently being tested around Palo Alto, California, and in rural Texas.All wireless systems have access to a fixed portion of radio spectrum, and hence a fixed capacity for transmitting data, known as bandwidth. Today's wireless networks, like those that serve data to cell phones, share that bandwidth among the gadgets connected to the network. The more devices that connect, the smaller the slice for any individual user, and the slower the download speeds. By constrast, a DIDO system, says Perlman, "can offer the full bandwidth available to the network to every user.”If a DIDO network was rolled out to supplement today's cellular ones, it would use many small towers rather than the large ones typically used now. "You would rely on lots of little towers scattered about that will work together to target you with your own signal," says Perlman. "They could be on light poles, on top of buildings, in businesses." Those small base stations would be under the control of DIDO servers constantly calculating how to make signals that interfere in just the right way. Those signals could be altered to deal with changing radio conditions and transmitter availability as gadgets moved, even when users were driving.
Nanowire circuitshttp://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/nanowire-electronics-that-can-be-shaped.htmlElectronic circuitry composed of nanowires can now be fitted to a surface of almost any shape on an object made of virtually any material, using a new approach to fabrication and transfer of nanowire electronics developed by Stanford researchers.Theyhave developed a new method of attaching nanowire electronics to the surface of virtually any object, regardless of its shape or what material it is made of. The method could be used in making everything from wearable electronics and flexible computer displays to high-efficiency solar cells and ultrasensitive biosensors. Quantum Wirehttp://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/dna-strands-that-select-nanotubes-are.htmlResearchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have tailored single strands of DNA that can be used to purify the highly desired “armchair” form of carbonnanotubes. Armchair-form single wall carbon nanotubes are needed to make “quantum wires” for low-loss, long distance electricity transmission and wiring. Rice University uses an alternative approach by amplifying the growth of desired nanotubes. Armchair quantum wire is probably in milligram non-pure quantities now and the breakthrough may bump it up to semi-pure gram or kilogram quantities in 5 years. Rice University has 90% purity. The combination of the two approaches could achieve higher purity.The armchair carbon nanotube is an ideal system to study fundamental physics in one-dimensional metals and potentially a superb material for applications such as electrical power transmission. Synthesis and purification efforts to date have failed to produce a homogeneous population of such a material. Here we report evolutionary strategies to find DNA sequences for the recognition and subsequent purification of (6,6) and (7,7) armchair species from synthetic mixturesArmchair carbon nanotubes could revolutionize electric power systems, large and small, Tu says. Wires made from them are predicted to conduct electricity 10 times better than copper, with far less loss, at a sixth the weight. But researchers face two obstacles: producing totally pure starting samples of armchair nanotubes, and “cloning” them for mass production. The first challenge, as the authors note, has been “an elusive goal.”Optical Waveguideshttp://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/isolated-light-optical-waveguide-will.htmlAn isolated light signal can only travel in one direction. If light weren't isolated, signals sent and received between different components on a photonic circuit could interfere with one another, causing the chip to become unstable. In an electrical circuit, a device called a diode isolates electrical signals by allowing current to travel in one direction but not the other. The goal, then, is to create the photonic analog of a diode, a device called an optical isolator. "This is something scientists have been pursuing for 20 years," Feng says.Normally, a light beam has exactly the same properties when it moves forward as when it's reflected backward. "If you can see me, then I can see you," he says. In order to isolate light, its properties need to somehow change when going in the opposite direction. An optical isolator can then block light that has these changed properties, which allows light signals to travel only in one direction between devices on a chip.To isolate light, Feng and his colleagues designed a new type of optical waveguide, a 0.8-micron-wide silicon device that channels light. The waveguide allows light to go in one direction but changes the mode of the light when it travels in the opposite direction.
Photographs of the transferred microelectrode arrays to a range of (a) adhesive substrates such as carbon tape, Kapton tape, double sided tape, Post-it® notes, and (b) nonadhesive substrates such as PDMS and Al foil. (c) Representative SEM images of the transferred microelectrode arrays onto the diverse nonconventional substrates.“We report a simple, versatile, and wafer-scale water-assisted transfer printing method (WTP) that enables the transfer of nanowire devices onto diverse nonconventional substrates that were not easily accessible before, such as paper, plastics, tapes, glass, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), aluminum foil, and ultrathin polymer substrates. The WTP method relies on the phenomenon of water penetrating into the interface between Ni and SiO2. The transfer yield is nearly 100%, and the transferred devices, including NW resistors, diodes, and field effect transistors, maintain their original geometries and electronic properties with high fidelity.”
The 'next gen' AMD GPU is even more of a 'graphics-enabled vector processor' than the Nvidia Fermi in their current GeForce line up attempted to be. Basically, as you see here, we're talking about a mini Cray supercomputer on a chip, with X86-compatible 64-bit addressing and memory management, essentially able to share both virtual and physical memory with the X86 main processors in the system and, if somehow connected via HyperTransport or QuickPath (later doubted though due to the Intel licensing issues) to the CPU, could literally be a very tightly coupled co-processor with its own memory on a side, yet able to address all the main memory at near CPU speed, without PCIe bottlenecks.If AMD is to use this brand new GPU architecture in the 28 nm Radeon HD7000 series, it will be the most revolutionary GPU change since the advent of programmable shaders in GPUs half a decade ago. We hope it will not affect the core graphics driver performance or stability, of course, but once the initial hurdles are overrun, this will make for a very interesting new system - and application - architecture. Yes, mixing few wide cores and hundreds of narrow cores in one application at one time may sound like a challenge, but the performance gains may more than justify it.
http://vr-zone.com/articles/next-generation-gpus-amd-s-cray-on-a-chip-/13163.htmlmore than just 3-D gaming or overclocking on their GPUs. These days, there is increasing number of non 3-D apps using one or another aspect of GPU acceleration - whether integer or FP processing, or just immense local memory bandwidth for specific search operations - in both high performance and desktop computing realms. And, with both Linux and Windows compilers supporting this well now - look at the upcoming Microsoft C++ AMP here - in-line GPU code support may become common in many more programs.http://vr-zone.com/articles/next-generation-gpus-amd-s-cray-on-a-chip-/13163.html
