Advances in Computers thread

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Nanoelectronic circuits that operate more than 10,000 times faster than current microprocessors

Could revolutionize high-speed electronics, nanoscale optoelectronics, and nonlinear optics

Circuits that can operate at frequencies up to 245 terahertz — tens of thousands times faster than today’s state-of-the-art microprocessors — have been designed and fabricated by researchers at National University of Singapore and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

The new circuits can potentially be used to construct ultra-fast computers or single-molecule detectors in the future, and open up new possibilities in nanoelectronic devices. For example, by changing the molecules in the molecular electronic device, the frequency of the circuits can be altered over hundreds of terahertz.

Nanoelectronic circuits that operate more than 10,000 times faster than current microprocessors | KurzweilAI

 

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Brain-inspired Microchips Simulate One Million Neurons In Real Time


Brain-inspired Microchips Simulate One Million Neurons In Real Time

By modeling a circuit board on the human brain, Stanford bioengineers have developed microchips that are 9,000 times faster than a typical PC. Called Neurogrid, these energy-efficient circuits could eventually power autonomous robots and advanced prosthetic limbs.

Bioengineers are smart to take inspiration from the human brain. It's a highly efficient information processor capable of crunching 100 million instructions per second (MIPS). Astoundingly, it only uses about 20 watts to power its 100 billion neurons. Today, our best supercomputers require a million watts to simulate a million neurons in real time (measured in terraflops). A standard desktop computer requires about 40,000 times more power to run and operates about 9,000 times slower.

The goal, therefore, is to produce information technologies with the power of the human brain. There are several initiatives underway that are working to achieve this goal, including IBM's neurosynaptic chips (and accompanying programming language), the University of Heidelberg's HICANN Chip, and brain-mapping initiatives like the European Human Brain Project.

 

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Forget 5G – 10Gbps WiFi is coming next year
10Gbps WiFi: 2015 Launch For World?s Fastest WiFi | BGR

The 5Mbps, 10Mbps or even 20Mbps download speeds we see now are fast, and the 5G data speeds we have been promised down the road are even more impressive. But wait until you hear about the next big advancement in WiFi technology. WiFi is already much faster than any current-generation cellular network will ever be, of course, but the wireless standard’s limited range is a big barrier to its utility outside of homes and offices. In 2015, however, we can now look forward to WiFi that is exponentially faster than current networks and also has a much further range.

Quantenna Communications announced earlier this week that it will launch a new chipset next year that facilitates what it calls “10G Wi-Fi.” According to the company, this new solution will support data transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps and will have much further range than current widely used WiFi standards.

 

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"Neurogrid" circuit modeled on the human brain is the fastest, most energy efficient of its kind

"Neurogrid" circuit modeled on the human brain is the fastest, most energy efficient of its kind

A group of engineers at Stanford has developed an iPad-sized, highly power-efficient way of simulating a million neurons and billions of synapses for as low as US$400. The breakthrough could both help our understanding of the brain and help develop a new generation of bionic limbs that are controlled by the patient's brain in real time with little effort at all.

With its hundred billion neurons, the human brain, possibly the most complex object in the known universe, can fully operate our bodies on only 20 W of power. Our measly man-made microprocessors are still decades away from coming close, despite the fact that performance per watt has been increasing exponentially over the years,

 

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HoverCam Solo 8: The world’s first 4K, USB 3.0 document camera

HoverCam Solo 8: The world?s first 4K, USB 3.0 document camera

Pathway Innovations and Technologies has updated its document camera line with what's billed as the world’s first 4K, USB 3.0 document camera with full-motion video: the Hovercam Solo 8.

Building on the previous model, the Hovercam Solo 5, the latest model features ultra HD 4K resolution, full motion (30 fps) recording, high speed USB 3.0 connectivity and improved Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that allows scanning of documents into editable text.

 

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IBM's Watson can now debate any topic

IBM's Watson can now debate any topic

Watson, IBM's supercomputer made famous three years ago for beating the very best human opponents at a game of Jeopardy, now comes with an impressive new feature. When asked to discuss any topic, it can autonomously scan its knowledge database for relevant content, "understand" the data, and argue both for and against that topic.

Watson's DeepQA is arguably the world's best computer system at natural language processing by a wide margin, which is an extraordinarily complex field of artificial intelligence. Perhaps the major difficulty in understanding human language is the lack of "common sense" in today's computers. For all its number-crunching power, Watson cannot "understand" the questions it is asked, at least not in a traditional sense. The way in which Watson answers questions is closer to symbol manipulation than to the way you and I understand and process information, but the end results are often impressive.

 

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New York City wants its old pay phones to be free Wi-Fi hotspots

New York City wants its old pay phones to be free Wi-Fi hotspots | DVICE

A couple of years ago New York City launched a pilot program to see how well old pay phone booths could work as free Wi-Fi hotspots. While that initial trial only involved ten locations, apparently it has been a real success, as the De Blasio administration is now looking for an operator prepared to convert up to 10,000 of the old booths to 21st century technology.

The whole plan sounds like a no-brainer, as pretty much nobody except the local drug dealers is still using these yucky 20th century relics as phones, and the wiring needed to connect the booths to the local infrastructure is already there. Once converted, the booths will no longer function as regular coin-operated pay phones, although free calls to 911 or NYC's 311 general help line will still work.

Currently 9,133 of the phones are being operated under a franchise which expires in October, so this seems like the perfect time to make a bold change. The new Wi-Fi hotspots will be free to use, with advertising supporting their operation. The new operator will be required to pay the city $17.5 million per year, or 50 percent of advertising revenue, whichever is greater. Advertising dollars actually come from two different sources, because the pay phone booths can also be used for billboard advertising, much as they are today.

 

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Forty-six transistors constructed on six CNTs is most complicated device of its kind to date

(Phys.org) —As silicon-based electronics are predicted to reach their absolute limits on performance around 2020, new technologies have been proposed to continue the trend in the miniaturization of electronic devices. One of these approaches consists of constructing field-effect transistors (FETs) directly on carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The resulting devices are on the scale of mere nanometers, although their fabrication is still a challenge.

Read more at: Forty-six transistors constructed on six CNTs is most complicated device of its kind to date

 

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MIT's tiny gesture-controlled apartment is brimming with tech

MIT's tiny gesture-controlled apartment is brimming with tech | DVICE

If you've ever moved to the big city, chances are you've seen your fair share of cramped living spaces. And if sci-fi has taught us anything, our cities are only going to get bigger and more cramped as time goes on. There are already so many of these mini domiciles, in fact, that a whole industry has cropped up to make them feel like home. As part of its CityHome project, MIT's Media Lab has thrown its much-vaunted hat into the ring. The result: a gesture-controlled armoire that just happens to come stocked with a whole apartment's worth of furniture.

The idea behind the CityHome project is to squeeze every last bit of functionality out of an apartment as small as 200-square-feet. To do this, the apartment has been equipped with a massive armoire called the RoboWall. Inside the RoboWall reside such essentials as a bed, a dining table fit for 14 guests, an expandable kitchen counter, and even a sizable office space. All of the furniture, as well as the apartment's lighting, can be controlled by either gestures or voice commands.

If you don't like the configuration of your RoboWall upon delivery, you can download lighting apps or personalize the furniture inside. You can even move the entire RoboWall from side to side to give you more room in either the bathroom or living room, depending which of your needs are most pressing.

 

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Brain-controlled flight is now possible

Imagine this scenario: you step onto a plane and sit next to a pilot in the cockpit. There, the pilot has a funny-looking helmet strapped to his head. Although he never touches the controls, the plane begins take-off procedures and launches into the sky, where it proceeds to fly to its destination and eventually land. The pilot flies the plane with just the power of his mind. This might sound like something out of a crazy science fiction movie, but it’s actually now possible.

A group of researchers in Germany have proven brain-controlled flight is now feasible. But not only that, they discovered that brain-controlled flight is also much more accurate than you might think.

Brain-controlled flight is now possible | DVICE

 

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Unconditional quantum teleportation between distant solid-state quantum bits

Unconditional quantum teleportation between distant solid-state quantum bits

Realizing robust quantum information transfer between long-lived qubit registers is a key challenge for quantum information science and technology. Here, we demonstrate unconditional teleportation of arbitrary quantum states between diamond spin qubits separated by 3 m. We prepare the teleporter through photon-mediated heralded entanglement between two distant electron spins and subsequently encode the source qubit in a single nuclear spin. By realizing a fully deterministic Bell-state measurement combined with real-time feed-forward quantum teleportation is achieved upon each attempt with an average state fidelity exceeding the classical limit. These results establish diamond spin qubits as a prime candidate for the realization of quantum networks for quantum communication and network-based quantum computing.

 

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Research team claims to have accurately 'teleported' quantum information ten feet

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers at Delft University in the Netherlands is reporting in a paper they have had published in the journal Science, that they have successfully used entanglement as a means of communication, over a distance of ten feet (three meters). Furthermore, they note, they did so with 100 percent reliability and without altering the spin state of the quantum bits (qubits) involved.

Read more at: Research team claims to have accurately 'teleported' quantum information ten feet

 

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Quantum phenomenon shown in $15m D-Wave computer

BBC News - Quantum phenomenon shown in $15m D-Wave computer

D-Wave claims it has built the first practical quantum computer, a type of machine that could solve complex problems faster than is possible today.

Scientists say they have shown that an effect called "entanglement" is present in eight units of quantum information.

Entanglement is a key step towards building a practical platform.

The results have just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review X.

D-Wave, based in Burnaby, outside Vancouver, has courted controversy with its claim to have built a practical quantum computer, a feat that was thought to be decades away.

In a tangle

Quantum computing exploits the strange physics of quantum mechanics, which takes hold at tiny (atomic or sub-atomic) scales.

The basic units of information in classical computers are called "bits" and are stored as a string of 1s and 0s, but their equivalents in a quantum system - qubits - can be both 1s and 0s at the same time.

But the qubits need to be synchronised using a quantum effect known as entanglement, which Albert Einstein dubbed "spooky action at a distance".

"This is the first peer-reviewed scientific paper that proves entanglement in D-Wave processors," Dr Colin Williams, director of business development at D-Wave, told BBC News.

"What's even more remarkable is that this is the largest demonstration of entanglement in any quantum, superconducting computing scheme so far," he said. "It's a big achievement for the field."

They also showed that the entanglement was stable, persisting throughout a critical operation of the processor.

 

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Up close with Zeus, the first consumer all-in-one 3D printer, scanner and fax

3D printing might be awesome, but so far it's mostly been the realm of design geeks and passionate tinkerers. The Zeus from AIO Robotics seeks to merge 3D scanning and printing with the push-button simplicity of today's consumer all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machines. In the process, the company also created the closest thing we've seen so far to the Star Trek replicator, with the added bonus of what you might call "ToIP" – Teleportation over Internet Protocol.

Up close with Zeus, the first consumer all-in-one 3D printer, scanner and fax

 

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Philips and Desso showcase digital LED carpet
Philips and Desso showcase digital LED carpet

Last year, Philips and Desso announced a partnership to develop a light-emitting carpet embedded with programmable LEDs. The companies chose the recent Clerkenwell Design Week to launch the technology in the UK.

The "light transmissive carpet" is much like normal carpet, but has LED arrays built into its underside that shine through to the top. Unlike a projector that displays content on a surface, the visuals cannot be blocked by people walking between the light-source and the display surface.

Philips and Desso suggest that the carpet could be deployed in places such as offices, hotels, conference centers and other public buildings. It can be used to display text or videos for purposes such as signage, providing visitors with information or simply adding to the ambiance of a space.

According to Ed Huibers, marketing and sales director at Philips Lighting, the concept for the LED carpet is based upon people's tendency to be guided by the floor when moving through a space and and to focus on sources of light.

The video below from last year shows the light transmissive carpet in action.

 

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10Gbps Wi-Fi: Huawei Successfully Tests Next-Gen Service
10Gbps Wi-Fi: Coming in 2018 - Tom's IT Pro

Huawei successfully tested 10Gbps Wi-Fi service in the company's Shenzhen lab. Huawei says the service will enable a new era of big data applications by using ultra-fast Wi-Fi technology that is 10 times faster than anything available commercially today.

The announcement indicated the 10.53Gbps data rate on 5GHz frequency bands was a transmission record for the Wi-Fi prototype and the increase in spectrum efficiency will make way for the next generation of Wi-Fi that could become commercially available as early as 2018. That projected date is a couple of years earlier than what Ken Hu, the company's CEO, predicted in August 2013 when Huawei began ramping up its research and development into fifth-generation mobile technology for commercial services by adding hundreds of engineers to develop the technology.

Huawei began researching next generation Wi-Fi in 2010 to look for ways to break the gridlock that standard Wi-Fi creates due to its limitations. The primary focus was to meet the demand for ultra-fast connectivity for the increase in smartphone applications that have a need for higher data transmission rates in densely populated environments such as enterprise offices, airports, stadiums, shopping malls and coffee shops.

 

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COMPUTEX: Intel unveils world's first 14-nanometer processor (update)
2014/06/03 21:38:00

Taipei, June 3 (CNA) Intel Corp. revealed Tuesday the world's first processor using the 14-nanometer technology, the Core M processor, designed for new 2-in-1 detachable gadgets that feature both very fast tablets and extremely thin laptops.

The new chip is used in the 12.5-inch Transformer Book T300 Chi detachable laptop from Taiwan's Asustek Computer Inc. that was showcased during a keynote speech delivered by Intel President Renee James at Computex Taipei, the world's second-largest computer trade show.

Touted by Intel as the most energy-efficient Intel Core processor in the company's history, the Core M processor is expected to be available on the market later this year, according to the world's largest chipmaker.

COMPUTEX: Intel unveils world's first 14-nanometer processor (update) | Tech | FOCUS TAIWAN - CNA ENGLISH NEWS

Teeny tiny PC fits on the head of an Ethernet port

http://www.dvice.com/2014-6-2/teeny-tiny-pc-fits-head-ethernet-port

If you like tiny things and being online thanks to them, then there's a new mini PC that you really should take a gander at. It's called the AsiaRF, and as PCs go it's pretty adorable. Supporting both Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, this teeny little sucker measures just 1.06 x 1.38 inches and somehow still manages to run full Linux.

As well as its RJ45 Ethernet port, the AsiaRF sports both USB and mini USB ports, the latter of which supplies the unit with power. The mini PC is based on a Ralink RT5350 chip with 32MB of RAM and 8MB of flash. Adorable. Even more adorable though is this little PC's $15 price tag. For that price, you could pick up dozens of these little suckers.

 

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Hologram technology coming to a smartphone near you soon

Hologram technology coming to a smartphone near you soon | DVICE

To see the future of technology, all you have to do is pay close attention to sci-fi movies. Tablets, video conferencing, air gestures — these are all technologies that were predicted by films. So where are our holograms?

While recent hologram technology has helped bring deceased artists back to life, they require complex mirror and light systems, and cost a fortune to create. Our fantasies of holograms in our pockets — that is projected from smartphones, tablets and watches — has been but a dream.

A California company based in Carlsbad called Ostendo Technologies Inc., however, could hold the key to bringing that sci-fi fantasy into reality.

According to the The Wall Street Journal, Ostendo has developed a tiny Tic Tac-sized projector that can project visible 3D holograms without requiring dorky 3D glasses.

The Ostendo Quantum Photonic Imager "fuses an image processor with a wafer containing micro light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, alongside software that helps the unit properly render images."

And if you take The Wall Street Journal's word, it's not as fuzzy as the ones in Star Wars: A New Hope:

"Ostendo showed a working prototype: a set of six chips laid together that beamed a 3-D image of green dice spinning in the air. The image and motion appeared consistent, irrespective of the position of the viewer."

Compared to the iPhone's 326 pixels per inch Retina display, Ostendo's hologram technology can piece together 3D images with up to 5,000 pixels per inch. That's tack sharp.

Valve shows off the newest version of its Oculus-killing VR headset


http://www.dvice.com/2014-6-3/valve-shows-newest-version-its-oculus-killing-vr-headset

We already know that Valve has been developing a VR headset, and the company has been fairly forthcoming in sharing its Oculus-crushing vision for the thing. What we haven't gotten is a good look at the headset itself. At a recent Boston VR Bender, however, a few lucky folks not only got to see Valve's mythic headset, but they got to try it on.

One of the lucky few, Redditor user "jonomf" shared his experiences after the fact. The headset apparently produces absolutely no tracking lag and a very high frame rate. The unit's two screens combine for a resolution of 2,160 x 1,280 and the only disorientation jonomf reported was upon taking the headset off. Interestingly, he described the transition from the Valve headset back to reality as feeling fuzzy and distant, almost as if reality itself was a downgrade from the VR experience.

As the unit is still a prototype, we aren't sure if it will retain its interestingly long face, especially since the bottom half of the screens are seemingly out of view. Valve has also been working up some creative ways to use their new, better than reality itself, headset. For instance, when you're not actually up for gaming yourself, you will be able to take part in a "life-size Dota 2 VR experience" where you're a spectator watching heroes dole out destruction upon one another. There was also mention of a lag-free hardware solution that will help you turn any room in your house into a Valve-powered holodeck. Now that's a reality we could really get used to.

 

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Intel aims to eliminate all PC cables in 2016

Goodbye rat's nest! Intel says wireless power, docking and connectivity will form the basis of its post-Broadwell "Skylake" reference designs.
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Intel's post-Broadwell next-generation platform -- codenamed Skylake -- will lead to Intel reference designs that eliminate all cables from the PC, the chipmaker announced Wednesday.

On stage at the Computex show here, Intel's Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group, demonstrated wireless display, docking and charging features that will close the loop on the final few mandatory cables in the typical PC environment.

The high-speed WiGig standard will be used as the short range "docking" technology, instantly creating a connection to a screen and peripherals when a device is moved within range and then swapping back out to standalone usage by just picking up and walking away. WiGig delivers speeds of up to 7Gbps.

A truly wireless -- and potentially tangle-free -- PC has long been coveted, but the idea has been hampered by the practical need for connections with peripherals and the need for power. More recently, advances in areas such as wireless charging have made this more of a reality.

Intel aims to eliminate all PC cables in 2016 - CNET

 

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E Ink broadens product mix, shows 32-inch display

Mention E Ink, and most people familiar with the company name associate it with a product for e-readers, but the company has been spreading its wings to apply its technology in broader areas. Technology watchers see E Ink leading electrophoretic technology into still broader paths. This week at Computex, the company left distinct impressions in other areas. E Ink was in the news Wednesday on Engadget with a report from Zach Honig that an upcoming smartwatch model from E Ink could appear with full wraparound display; the smartwatch panel would stretch from one end to the other.

Read more at: E Ink broadens product mix, shows 32-inch display