Advances in Computers thread

[ScienceRocks]

First quantum dot monitor to hit US retail shelves this summer

We’ve been hearing a bit more about quantum dot technologylately, and now Phillips has released the world’s first quantum dot monitor. The Phillips 276E6ADS sports a 27-inch screen with full HD resolution. The monitor utilizes Philips Color QS Vision IQ, which is optimized to provide vivid colors and more realistic images. Quantum dot technology is a semiconductor nanomaterial that forces the electrons to move only in three spatial directions, along the x,y, and z axis, supposedly providing an image that is completely stable and uniform.
Philips have partnered with QD Vision, which produces nanomaterials that dramatically improves color quality in televisions and other types of video display technology. Color IQ, QD Vision’s trademarked design, is a semiconductor nanocrystal technology that precisely emits light to produce more vibrant blues, greens, and reds. LCD TVs and monitors with Color IQ usually exhibit a more dynamic range of colors and can show the true natural palette encoded in the picture.

 

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Graphene wrappings could boost chip speeds by up to 30 percent

A typical computer chip includes millions of transistors connected with an extensive network of copper wires. Although chip wires are unimaginably short and thin compared to household wires both have one thing in common: in each case the copper is wrapped within a protective sheath.For years a material called tantalum nitride has formed protective layer in chip wires.Now Stanford-led experiments demonstrate that a different sheathing material, graphene, can help electrons scoot through tiny copper wires in chips more quickly.
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a strong yet thin lattice. Stanford electrical engineer H.-S. Philip Wong says this modest fix, using graphene to wrap wires, could allow transistors to exchange data faster than is currently possible. And the advantages of using graphene would become greater in the future as transistors continue to shrink.

"Researchers have made tremendous advances on all of the other components in chips but recently, there hasn't been much progress on improving the performance of the wires," he said.

 

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Will Pebble smartwatch be able to compete with Apple and Google?

Time's a ticking for Pebble. As the Palo Alto, Calif., smartwatch maker recently started sending the latest model of its phone-connected watches to those who helped fund its development, analysts cast doubt ...

 

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Virtual reality set to boom with Oculus and Morpheus, but challenges remain
The promise of virtual reality is that it will transport you to new worlds: Putting on a headset is like stepping into a portal to the unknown.

 

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Imec presents successors to FinFET for 7nm and beyond

At this week’s VLSI 2015 Symposium in Kyoto (Japan), imec reported new results on nanowire FETs and quantum-well FinFETs towards post-FinFET multi-gate device solutions. As the major portion of the industry adopts FinFETs as the workhorse transistor for 16nm and 14nm, researchers worldwide are looking into the limits of FinFETs and potential...

Read more »

 

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Dwave commercializes 1152 qubit chip but there are 2048 physical qubits so some chips will have more than 1152 qubits active

D-Wave Systems, the world's first quantum computing company, announced that it has broken the 1000 qubit barrier, developing a processor about double the size of D-Wave’s previous generation and far exceeding the number of qubits ever developed by D-Wave or any other quantum effort. This is a major technological and scientific achievement...

 

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Flashristors: Getting the Best of Memristors and Flash Memory

A team of researchers at Bingöl University in Bingöl and Bilkent University in Ankara, both in Turkey, reported on 12 June in Applied Physics Letters that they’ve developed a 'flashristor,' a device that combines both the properties of a memristor and a flash-memory cell. Unlike existing devices, the memristor effect in their flashristor is not a local effect (such as a change on an atomic scale in crystalline structure), but a distributed effect in a larger area of the device, explains Aykutlu Dâna, one of the paper’s authors. “This way you can switch on and off with a high precision and repeatability,” he adds.

 

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Desktop computers Graphic Processing Units now 1000 times faster than in the year 2000.

Nvidia GeForce2 Ultra which became available 15 years ago was able to process 8*10^9 floating point operations per second (8 Gflops), had 64MB of 7.36GB/s DDR memory and costed 500$. It was the most powerful card of the last year of previous millenium and was made with a 180 nm manufacturing process.

New AMD Radeon R9 Fury X is able to process 8.6*10^12 flop/s (8.6 Tflops), has 4GB of 512GB/s HBM memory and costs 650$. It's the most powerful single GPU card right now and it's made with a 28 nm manufacturing process(which is used since 2012).

 

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Nanowires could be the LEDs of the future

The latest research from the Niels Bohr Institute shows that LEDs made from nanowires will use less energy and provide better light. The researchers studied nanowires using X-ray microscopy and with this ...

 

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Google says its speech recognition technology now has only an 8% word error rate (Down from 23% in 2013)

Google today announced its advancements in deep learning, a type of artificial intelligence, for key processes like image recognition and speech recognition.
When it comes to accurately recognizing words in speech, Google now has just an 8 percent error rate. Compare that to 23 percent in 2013, Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome, and Apps at Google, said at the company’s annual I/O developer conference in San Francisco.
Pichai boasted, “We have the best investments in machine learning over the past many years.” Indeed, Google has acquired several deep learning companies over the years, including DeepMind, DNNresearch, and Jetpac.
Deep learning involves ingesting lots of data to train systems called neural networks, and then feeding new data to those systems and receiving predictions in response.
The company’s current neural networks are now more than 30 layers deep, Pichai said.

 

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Artificial neuron can communicate the same way as a human neuron

Researchers build a fully functional neuron by using organic bioelectronics

Neurons are isolated from each other and communicate with the help of chemical signals, commonly called neurotransmitters or signal substances. Inside a neuron, these chemical signals are converted to an electrical action potential, which travels along the axon of the neuron until it reaches the end. Here at the synapse, the electrical signal is converted to the release of chemical signals, which via diffusion can relay the signal to the next nerve cell.
To date, the primary technique for neuronal stimulation in human cells is based on electrical stimulation. However, scientists at the Swedish Medical Nanoscience Centre (SMNC) at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Neuroscience in collaboration with colleagues at Linköping University, have now created an organic bioelectronic device that is capable of receiving chemical signals, which it can then relay to human cells.
“Our artificial neuron is made of conductive polymers and it functions like a human neuron”, says lead investigator Agneta Richter-Dahlfors, professor of cellular microbiology. “The sensing component of the artificial neuron senses a change in chemical signals in one dish, and translates this into an electrical signal. This electrical signal is next translated into the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in a second dish, whose effect on living human cells can be monitored.“

 

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Finally we will get free gigabit Wi-Fi everywhere and of course it will come from Google

Larry Page had announced last month that Sidewalk Labs (a new Google company) would focus on improving city life for everyone by developing and incubating urban technologies to address issues like cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage.Sidewalk Labs announced it would be leading the acquisition of two companies behind New...

 

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Superfast lasers create a hologram you can touch, feeling "like sandpaper"

Digital Nature Group
A close-up of a hologram by the Digital Nature Group's femtosecond laser.

The halls of science fiction are well-decorated with dreams of holograms—Jules Verne introduced holography to literature in 1893 with The Castle of the Carpathians, and how else would we know that Obi-Wan was Leia’s only hope?

Now, researchers at the Digital Nature Group(DNG) have found a way to use lasers, mirrors and cameras to create three-dimensional, interactive holograms comprised of tiny points of light called voxels.

 

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The first true free air plasma hologram that is safe to touch

Lasers, plasma, and humans don’t mix well.
In a new paper, however, researchers say they’ve created a laser-induced plasma display that is safe to touch. The key breakthrough? The team found that by reducing the length of the laser bursts from nanoseconds to femtoseconds—or a mere millionth of a billionth of a second—they could avoid causing damage to the skin.
Though still in the research phase—the necessary equipment is bulky and the images produced are small (no more than 8 cubic millimeters)—the resulting system, dubbed Fairy Lights, is still pretty magical.

 

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D-Wave Systems breaks the 1000 qubit quantum computing barrier

D-Wave Systems has broken the quantum computing 1000 qubit barrier, developing a processor about double the size of D-Wave’s previous generation, and far exceeding the number of qubits ever developed by D-Wave or any other quantum effort, the announcement said.
It will allow “significantly more complex computational problems to be solved than was possible on any previous quantum computer.”
At 1000 qubits, the new processor considers 21000 possibilities simultaneously, a search space which dwarfs the 2512 possibilities available to the 512-qubit D-Wave Two. ‪”In fact, the new search space contains far more possibilities than there are ‪particles in the observable universe.”
The new processors, comprising over 128,000 Josephson tunnel junctions, are believed to be the most complex superconductor integrated circuits ever successfully yielded.

 

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Researchers introduce new layered semiconducting materials as silicon alternative

When the new iPhone came out, customers complained that it could be bent -- but what if you could roll up your too big 6 Plus to actually fit in your pocket? That technology might be available sooner than you think, based on the work of USC Viterbi engineers. For many decades, silicon has been the heart of modern electronics -- but as a material, it has its limits. As our devices get smaller and smaller, the basic unit of these devices, a transistor, must also get tinier and tinier. Bottom line: the size of the silicon transistor is reaching its physical limit. As silicon devices are based on what is called a top-down cutting method, it is increasingly difficult for silicon to be made even smaller. Consumers also demand phones to be lighter, faster, smaller, more flexible, wearable, bendable, etc. Yet silicon is also rigid -- one can't bend your smart phone or computer. These physical limitations have driven the race for new materials that can be used as semiconductors in lieu of silicon.

 

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IKEA plans to present smart kitchen that tells you how to cook

Known for its innovative concept and monitoring trends in the development of technology, IKEA has decided to make smart furniture . Their Concept Kitchen 2025 with the help of technology Turns various "gadgets" and plug-ins that aim to preserve both time and other resources. The star of their concept is definitely a "Table for living".

The clever kitchen table has a camera equipped with a projector that can be displayed on your desktop,this smart table can also scan recipes and ingredients that you brought from the market give suggestions and ideas for the specialties plus can make lunch plan. But this is not all that IKEA has provided for the modern kitchen of the future. You see more on the video attached.

 

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This "smart mirror" is the future of high-tech homes

Displays social media, news, weather, etc.

Why check your smartphone in the morning when all your notifications from the night before are displayed on your bedroom mirror?
It’s not science fiction. A team of Purdue University students has integrated a monitor into a mirror that displays the time, weather, traffic, bus routes and your class schedule all on the same reflective surface.
The invention, called MirrorMirror, employs facial recognition technology to display personalized information relevant to the user, including Tweets or Facebook posts. Its open source framework ensures the mirror is compatible with other household technologies, such as wireless thermostats, door locks and light bulbs.

 

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Researchers build first working memcomputer prototype
(Tech Xplore)—A combined team of researchers from the University of California and Politecnico di Torino in Italy has built, for the first time, a working memory-crunching computer (memcomputer) prototype. ...

 

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LG's AIT touch panels to usher in lighter, thinner notebooks
By Chris Wood - July 6, 2015 2 Pictures

LG's display subsidiary has announced that it will begin mass producing notebook displays using Advanced In-Cell Touch (AIT) technology. The application of the tech, which does away with the dedicated layer for touch sensors you'll find in conventional panels, should lead to some of the thinnest and lightest notebooks yet.