Second place on the list goes to a system with a max speed of 478.2 teraflops

IBM’s latest supercomputer – Roadrunner -- sits atop the Top500 supercomputers list that will be released at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany this week.
Its rise to the top of the list comes after it was able to break the petaflop barrier last week. News.com reports that Roadrunner was able to reach 1.026 petaflops, a bit over one quadrillion calculations per second.

The Roadrunner supercomputer dethroned IBM’s own BlueGene/L -- last year’s most powerful supercomputer -- pushing BlueGene/L to the number two spot on the list. BlueGene/L was able to reach 208.6 teraflops last year. This year it more than doubled its performance to 478.2 teraflops, but was still unable to match Roadrunner.

Roadrunner is based on the IBM QA22 blades that use an advanced version of the Cell processor found in the Sony PS3. The processing cores used in the Roadrunner are from AMD and make the machine the world’s first hybrid supercomputer.

Roadrunner is comprised of 278 refrigerator-size server racks and has 6,562 dual-core Opterons. IBM is the manufacturer of 210 of the 500 supercomputers on the Top500 list. Other well known makers with systems making the Top500 list include HP with 183 systems on the list and its top performer taking the number 8 spot on the list.

Sun has its Ranger system on the list at number 4, the Jaguar from Cray is number 5, Encanto from SGI is number 7, and Altix from SGI is number 10. Intel is the dominant processor in the supercomputer market powering 75% of all systems that made the Top500 list and 90% of ranked quad-core processor machines.

[Source]

IBM & Los Alamos supercomputer might be as fast as your brain.

Not even a week after the new Roadrunner supercomputer was juiced up and put to work, scientists are hard at work trying to push the machine to its limits. Housed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the primary goal of the supercomputer is to model the safety of the United States' aging nuclear weapons stockpile. At over a certified petaflop, the machine renders calculations in a day that would take every person on Earth a calculator and 46 years to accomplish.

A supercomputer of this power will be incredibly useful for modeling things other than nuclear decay and global climate. At over a quadrillion – a million billion – calculations per second, Roadrunner is the only computer on Earth that can keep up with one of the few things more amazing than itself: the human brain.

Los Alamos researchers are putting this power to work with a program dubbed PetaVision. The program was created to model neuron and synapse interaction in the visual cortex of the human brain. The brain uses over a billion neurons and trillions of synapses alone to process the visual information it receives and is one of the most complicated processes known to exist in grey matter.

Supercomputers like Roadrunner bring new possibilities for modeling human recognition systems, and the advances are not likely to stop there. In the past, computers have been unable to flawlessly perform cognitive tasks that the human brain does easily; tasks like picking out a face in a crowd, or detecting oncoming vehicles in traffic. Such a large step up in processing power may enable scientists to breech this difficult wall in mimicry.

The researchers used PetaVision to set a processing record with Roadrunner, spinning up to an astonishing 1.144 petaflop/s. "Just a week after formal introduction of the machine to the world, we are already doing computational tasks that existed only in the realm of imagination a year ago,” explains Terry Wallace, associate director for Science, Technology and Engineering at Los Alamos.

The supercomputer's architecture is based on a hybrid node system. Each node contains two AMD Opteron dual-core and four PowerXCell 8i processers. The PowerXCell CPUs are derived from the same Cell processor used in the Sony Playstation 3 and act as computational accelerators for the Opterons.

Source from DailyTech

Intel says open host controller specifications have cost gazillions of dollars to develop

According to Intel’s Nick Knupffer, there are a lot of myths going around concerning USB 3.0 and Intel’s involvement in the development of the specification. Knupffer wrote a blog post on Intel’s website in an attempt to dispel these myths.

Knupffer points out that Intel is not developing the USB 3.0 specification. What Intel is developing is the host controller spec which Knupffer describes as a “Dummies Guide” to building a USB 3.0 compatible piece of silicon.

Knupffer says in the blog post that Intel has invested “gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours” in developing the open host controller and despite its significant investment still plans to give the specification to competing manufacturers for free. Knupffer also says that Intel loves it when CPU performance is used to the max and the huge increase in bandwidth of USB 3.0 will mean larger file transfers and more processor usage. This in turn is expected to lead to an increased demand for faster processors.

AMD and NVIDIA leveled allegations at Intel recently that claim Intel was withholding the open host controller specifications in an attempt to give itself a market advantage. Intel and AMD claim that by withholding the specification the lead Intel will have in bringing USB 3.0 compliant products to market will be in the six to nine month range.

Intel denied the allegations of withholding the open host controller specifications at the time AMD and NVIDIA made their charges public and announced they would be designing their own open host controller. In Knupffer’s blog post, he again says that Intel isn’t holding the open host controller specifications back from competitors.

According to Knupffer, the significant investment in the open host controller specifications is specifically to get USB 3.0 into the market faster, so why would it withhold the specification. Intel still maintains that the specifications aren’t ready and that it plans to give the specifications to other manufacturers in the second half of 2008.

The final myth that Knupffer addresses in his post is that USB 3.0 technology borrows heavily from technology used in PCI Express. Intel points out that it was involved with both the PCI-SIG and the USB-IF at the design stage for both PCI Express and for USB 3.0. The insinuation form Intel is that the technology that is similar in both devices was developed on its dime.

Source from DailyTech

Water conservation has been a widely encouraged practice for the better part of six or seven decades. Though along the way various forms of water transport and purification have sprung up, making life a little easier for people in climates that often experience droughts or simply live in deserts, it still remains an important part of day-to-day life in some of those. Most denizens of cities are probably familiar with the idea, but as most modern cities are well-plumbed, it doesn't add up to quiet the level of importance.

In Europe, according to English nongovernmental organization Waterwise, the water used by washing machines in the UK has risen 23 percent in the last 15 years, accounting for some 13 percent of daily consumption. Overall, the daily usage weighs in at around 455 million liters.

While 13 percent doesn't seem like a great deal and some may say that other things, like sanitary appliances should be examined for efficiency first, being more wasteful on the whole, the fact that nearly every single resident of a village, town, burb or city will have to at some point wash clothes, a more efficient machine to do so could be well-received in many locals.

Enter the Xeros. The washing machine, developed at the University of Leeds, breaks all previous efficiency records. It uses just a single cup of water for an entire load. The revolutionary machine could be in production as early as next year, according to Xeros Ltd, a company created specifically to develop and market the appliance.

Instead of soaking the load in water and detergent, the Xeros uses about 20 kilograms of small plastic chips to gather dirt and other particles which are dissolved by the single cup of water throughout the wash cycle. The chips measure about half a centimeter in size and though the developers recommend using fresh chips in each load, can be reused up to 100 times.

“This is one of the most surprising and remarkable technologies I've encountered in recent years,” said Dr. Rob Rule, director of Xeros Ltd. “Xeros has the ability to save billions of litres of water per year and, we believe, the potential to revolutionise the global laundry market.”

Source from DailyTech

New binoculars use brain waves to activate enemy detection algorithms based on threat response

The enemy is the area. You scan the perimeter alert, tense. Your pulse races.

In the past such situations called for constant surveillance via binoculars either discrete or in headgear to try to spot the approaching enemy. However, such binoculars were limited by reaction times and luck, and the skilled enemy could sneak up on friendly forces and catch them unaware.

Northrop Grumman Corporation, a major defense contractor, is looking to solve this problem and take binoculars and imaging technology into the next century. The company is leading a consortium of academia and industry that has just received an award to begin design prototypes of its panoramic binocular day/night system that uses brain wave monitoring to trigger target detection and alert soldiers of threats.

Brain wave monitoring is nothing new. The consumer industry this year received some device sporting the technology in the form of brain mice. Users found the new mice to be particularly handy in first-person-shooter games, but also handy in analyzing stress responses for mediation and athletics.

The new Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System program, or CT2WS, is a logical extension of these ideas and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its goal is to not only provide the soldier with an extremely wide, panoramic field of view, but to also implement a neuro-optical interface to trigger target detection for fast-moving, elusive targets. The first phase of objectives for the project is to develop the basic circuit model for the device on a breadboard and to complete the Human-aided Optical Recognition/Notification of Elusive Threats (HORNET) system, which will include the brain interface and the threat detection algorithms.

The HORNET utilizes special electro-encephalogram electrodes sandwiched in a custom helmet against the scalp. These electrodes provide constant monitoring of the soldier's electrical brain activity. Over time, the system will learn and be trained. By accepting whether a soldier is in a threatening situation or not, and comparing it to their brain response, the system will learn to recognize combat situations and react appropriately.

Michael House, Northrop Grumman's CT2WS program manager states, "Northrop Grumman's HORNET system leverages the latest advances in real-time coupling of human brain activity with automated cognitive neural processing to provide superior target detection. The system will maintain persistent surveillance in order to defeat an enemy's attempts to surprise through evasive move-stop-move tactics, giving the U.S. warfighter as much as a 20-minute advantage over his adversaries."

The system will be put to use both at home and abroad. Among its possible uses are border patrol, IED detection, and active combat in areas like Iraq. The initial phase of development will take 12 months and will grant up to $6.7 million to the project.

Among the many collaborators with Northrop Grumman on the project are SAIC, San Diego, Calif.; Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga.; Theia Technologies LLC, Wilsonville, Ore.; Sensics, Inc., Baltimore, Md.; L-3 Communications Infrared Products, Dallas, Texas; Georgetown University, Wash., D.C.; Portland State University, Portland, Ore.; and the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.

Source from DailyTech

Scientist cook up a cooler way to produce polyethylene thin films.

One would pretty much have to be living under a rock in a developed nation to not have encountered polyethylene. The chains of ethylene or ethene monomers comprise a vast amount of products, from the ubiquitous plastic bag to film to implants. PE comes in various forms and densities and over 60 million tons of the material are produced yearly.

Though the production of PE is not particularly difficult in bulk, making ultra-thin films of the polymer have been notably more time and energy consuming. Typically, engineers create a dilute solution from an organic solvent and the polymer. To break up the crystalline structure of the polymer, heat must be applied to the solution. The solution can then be applied to a surface and the film forms when the solvent is cooled or removed.

A new method, devised by scientists at the University of Konstanz, removes the need for heating to dissolve the polymer into a solution by creating an aqueous solution of nanoscale crystals from the start. The catalyzation process involves ethylene and nickel complexes and produces crystals of about 25nm by 6nm in size.

To produce the film, droplets of the solution are applied to glass slides which are spun at 2,000 revolutions per minute. The spinning process removes the non-polymer substances. When all is said and done, a thin film of about 50nm in thickness is left behind.

The key to this technique lies in an amorphous, or non-crystalline, layer of PE on each of the crystals. Though the coating measures about 1nm in thickness, the interaction between each crystal's is very strong, holding the crystals in place while under the effects of the high speed spin.

Ultra-thin polymer coatings, especially polymers like polyethylene, which are completely harmless and environmentally inert, could be used for vast array of technologies from medical to electronics. Thin polymer films are already under investigation for uses in applications like bacterial growth prevention and incredibly durable rechargeable batteries.

Source from DailyTech

Roadrunner supercomputer is first to break petaflop barrier

A new supercomputer in the U.S. has broken a barrier that many thought wouldn’t be broken for years to come. A new supercomputer-- dubbed Roadrunner-- has broken the petaflop barrier.
Roadrunner was designed by engineers and scientists at IBM and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ultimately, Roadrunner will be placed into a classified environment where it will be used to simulate what effects aging has on the stockpile of nuclear weapons the U.S. has in its arsenal. The problem it will work on is modeling how aging nuclear weapons behave the first fraction of a second during an explosion. Before beginning its nuclear weapons research, Roadrunner will be used to model the effects of global warming.

The Roadrunner supercomputer costs $133 million and is built using chips from both consumer electronics and more common server processors.

Roadrunner has 12,960 chips that are an improved version of the Cell chip used in the PS3. These Cell processors act as a turbocharger for certain portions of the calculations the Roadrunner processes. The computer also uses a smaller, unspecified number of AMD Opteron processors.

A computer researcher from the University of Tennessee, Jack Dongarra told the New York Times, “This [breaking the petaflop barrier] is equivalent to the four-minute mile of supercomputing.”

Horst Simon from the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory said, “Roadrunner tells us about what will happen in the next decade. Technology is coming from the consumer electronics market and the innovation is happening first in terms of cell phones and embedded electronics.”

Technology first appearing in the consumer electronics market and then making its way into supercomputing is a stark contrast to a process that commonly works in the exact opposite manner.

In total, Roadrunner has 116,640 processing cores and the real challenge for programmers is figuring out how to keep all of those processing cores in use simultaneously to get the best performance. Roadrunner requires about 3 megawatts of power, or about enough electricity to run a large shopping center.

To put the processing power in perspective, Thomas P. D’Agostino of the National Nuclear Security Administration said that if all 6 billion people on Earth entered calculations on a calculator for 24 hours a day, seven days per week it would take 46 years to do what Roadrunner can do in one day.

How Roadrunner is cooled is unknown, IBM has recently moved to liquid cooling for its supercomputers, but Roadrunner appears to be air cooled.

Source from DailyTech

AMD and NVIDIA say Intel won't share its USB 3.0 open host controller specs

The USB 3.0 specification is expected to be out in 2009 and will significantly upgrade the bandwidth of the current USB 2.0 ports and products that all computer users are familiar with. The body responsible for the support and promotion of the USB specifications going back to USB 1.1 is the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF).
The USB-IF was founded by Intel in 1995 along with other industry players including Microsoft, HP, Texas Instruments, NEC and NXP Semiconductors. Currently, the USB-IF and its members are working to bring the USB 3.0 specification to market. USB 3.0 is also being called “PCI Express over cable” because the USB 3.0 specification uses intellectual property that was sourced from the PCI SIG. USB 3.0 will increase the bandwidth offered by USB 2.0 by 10 times with a data throughput of about 5 gigabits per second.

Despite the fact that much of the intellectual property behind the USB 3.0 specification wasn’t developed by Intel, AMD and NVIDIA both assert that Intel is keeping crucial information concerning the open host controller to itself. According to NVIDIA and AMD, Intel has working silicon, meaning the open host controller portion is mature and working, yet Intel is refusing to give the specifications to other processor and chipset makers.

AMD and NVIDIA say that by withholding the open host controller specifications that Intel is basically giving itself a market advantage of six to nine months because of the time lag between receiving the host controller specifications by other CPU and chipset makers and getting product to the marketplace.

An Intel source told News.com, “Intel only gives it [open host controller specifications] out once it's finished. And it's not finished. If it was mature enough to release, it would be released. If you have an incomplete spec and give it out to people, these people will build their chipsets and you'll end up with chipsets that are incompatible with devices. That's what (Intel) is trying to avoid."

The Intel source continued saying, “[Intel is] a little bit behind and that's what might be causing some of the resentment. You could take the opinion that Intel is giving stuff out for free and people are complaining because (Intel) isn't giving it out fast enough.”

If Intel feels that AMD and NVIDIA aren’t willing to do the hard work of developing the open host controller for USB 3.0 themselves, it may be very mistaken. AMD and NVIDIA say they are going to develop their own open host controller for USB 3.0. Both firms point out that developing a separate open host controller could very well mean incompatibilities between USB 3.0 controllers and products.

An AMD source told News.com, “We are starting development on it [open host controller] right now.” An NVIDIA source says the first meeting of the alternate open host controller specification is set for next week and adds, "We fully intend to productize this spec.”

Intel maintains that it is not withholding the specification and that it will provide the details for the open host controller when it is complete.

Intel is in hot water already for some of its business practices. The FTC announced last week that it will investigate whether Intel has abused its market position to stifle competition.

AMD announced at Computex that its next-generation notebook platform is now available and features not only new chipsets, but new graphics options and new processor availability. AMD says that the next-generation notebook platform -- code named Puma -- will be the foundation for the new AMD Business class, AMD GAME! and AMD LIVE! notebook solutions.

The notebook platform utilizes the new AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-core mobile processor. The new processor has technology to make it more energy efficient including AMD Independent Dynamic Core technology, mobile-optimized memory controller and a new power-optimized HyperTransport 3.0.

The new mobile chipset also features integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics and supports DirectX 10. Integrated graphics in a notebook usually means the inability to do anything requiring intense graphics like gaming. AMD says that its integrated HD 3200 graphics delivers up to three times the 3D performance of competitor’s products and features built-in ATI Avivo HD technology for smooth HD video playback.

ATI announced a new Mobility Radeon 3800 series as well offering the highest performance of any Mobile Radeon HD part. The Mobility Radeon 3800 supports PCI Express 2.0, DirectX 10.1, integrated HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort as well as multi-monitor support. The 3800 can support up to 4 displays natively.

The Mobility 3800 also works with ATI’s CrossFireX and Hybrid Graphics to provide more performance by running both the discrete and integrated graphics processors at the same time.

AMD says that notebooks running the next-generation Puma platform are now available from OEM suppliers like Acer, Asus, Clevo, HP and more.

Source from DailyTech

Many enthusiasts are avoiding DDR3 RAM for their computer systems because despite the higher frequencies DDR3 can operate at, much of the benefit of the higher frequencies is lost to timings not as tight as what DDR2 offers.

At Computex Aeneon is showing its line of DDR3 RAM called Xtune. Aeneon Xtune RAM on display is DDR3-1866 CL10 modules. Aeneon says these modules are aimed at gamers and overclockers using high performance desktop platforms including the Intel X38, X48 and P45 chipsets as well as the NVIDIA 790i Ultra chipset.

The new Aeneon Xtune modules are available in 2x1GB dual channel kits with support for XMP and EPP2.0. The 1866MHz speed of the RAM can be achieved at standard voltages.

Aeneon is also introducing an Xtune DDR3-1600 CL9 line that offers 4GB dual channel 2x2GV modules. Aeneon probably isn’t a name as readily identifiable to gamers and overclockers as Corsair or OCZ. Aeneon is the retail arm of DRAM maker Qimonda. Qimonda is also the provider for ATI’s GDDR5 memory that will be used in ATIs upcoming video cards.

DailyTech reported Qimonda was the GDDR5 supplier for ATI in May 2008. The first video cards from ATI to use the GDDR5 RAM will be from the forthcoming HD 4800 series.

Source from dailyTech

Star Trek technology yet again actualizes in the real world

A new portable imaging tool, which held over the patient's skin, allows quick and unobtrusive scanning of tissues. The device bears an unmistakable resemblances to the palm sized medical scanners known as "tricorders" in the Star Trek science-fiction universe. And like many other Star Trek technologies that seemed far out at the time like voice recognition software and positron beams, the device has been realized in the real world.

The new, wallet-sized scanner, developed by researchers at Georgia Tech, uses something called a narrowband filter mosaic. The mosaic includes photosensitive pixel sensors that observe different wavelengths, allowing for multispectral imaging. The filter mosaic improves the use and functionality of medical scanning techniques, allowing for subsurface characterization.

Normally cuts, bruises, and erythema are hard to diagnose in severity, particularly for untrained personnel. Lighting and skin color can skew results even for the trained eye. The new device will allow even untrained personnel to assess the severity of an injury.

Other applications of the filtering technology used in the scanner would be military imaging/target classing, manufacturing quality inspections, food contamination examinations, remote sensing for mining, and atmospheric monitoring. In the medical field they hold promise for diagnosing early stage cancers and tumors.

The new technology was pioneered by the Georgia Tech’s Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (CATEA). The tech will first be put to use in diagnosing and preventing pressure ulcers. Victims of paralysis or other conditions that render the body immobile often suffer from these severe secondary afflictions. Early pressure ulcers begin with erythema (broke capillaries) which the scanner detects. Medicare spending on pressure ulcer treatment is conservatively estimated to account for $1.34B USD annually.

The scanner could also be used to detect bruise early to help catch abuse cases.

The filter mosaic can also be laminated with digital camera sensor chips. The CATEA researchers have filed for a patent and are exploring commercialization options.

With the low cost involved, the field of multispectral imaging may finally start to see commercial interest soon. Says Dr. Stephen Sprigle, director of CATEA and professor of industrial design and human physiology, "Although multispectral imaging has matured into a technology with applications in many fields, clinicians and practitioners in these fields have generally stayed away from it due to extremely high costs and lack of portability. Now, the possibilities are plentiful."

Perhaps before long you might see one of these tricorder-like devices in a medical office you visit.

Source from DailyTech

New device looks to improve neural prosthetics for paralysis victims

For America's approximately 5,000 people who suffer cervical spinal cord injuries each year, typically resulting in quadriplegia, new brain-computer interfaces are not merely fun and games, they're a means to perhaps someday live a full life again and possibly regain some movement. Standing in the way is the complexity of the in-tissue implants needed to gain more complex control.

A newly designed implant from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) aims to simplify the process of attaching miniature electrodes to brain neurons via robotic control using MEMS devices, tiny little motors. The Caltech Robotics Burdick group is running the project. The group is led by research engineers Michael Wolf, Joel Burdick, his mentor, Jorge Cham and Edward Branchaud. According to researchers, this is the "first robotic approach to establishing an interface between computers and the brain by positioning electrodes in neural tissue".

The research "could enhance the performance and longevity of emerging neural prosthetics, which allow paralyzed people to operate computers and robots with their minds" according to the researchers. An early prototype of the system has been constructed.

The prototype is currently undergoing testing on non-human primates. According to the researchers, the device "is designed to fit inside a standard laboratory cranial chamber, used for acute experiments in non-human primates, to allow semi-chronic operation. A semi-chronic design has the advantage that the device can be repositioned over a different region with minimal effort and without need for additional surgeries."

The device positions four electrodes to optimize action potentials. Wolf describes the overall design of the device, stating, "Our approach consists of implanting a small robotic device (and accompanying control algorithm) with many individually-motorized electrodes that each autonomously locate, isolate, and track a neuron for long periods of time. To further complicate matters, we wish to find signals only from neurons dedicated ('tuned') to a particular task, say controlling an 'arm reach.' While the primary aim of such technology is for a neural interface for neuroprostheses, such a device may also advance the state-of-the-art experimental techniques for electrophysiology."

While the Caltech team is still working on fine tuning the MEMS design for the final version of the device, the software algorithm is complete. The algorithm in many respects is the keystone of the project. It was actually adapted from algorithms the U.S. military uses to track airplanes. On a most basic level, the algorithm involves the motors slowly being powered to drive the probe down into a tissue. As it picks up a signal it pushes the probe deeper until the signal deepens, in which case it backs up to position itself on the active neuron.

Neuroprosthetics, the science of using brain implants to power robotic limb movement, is a budding field of science, buoyed by recent better understanding of the human brain and new nanoelectronic designs. However longevity is a major concern as cells in the brain can shift slightly and even slight shifts in an in-brain electrode probe could disconnect it.

The advance of medical science is frustratingly slow for the afflicted, but with improvements such as the new Caltech interface, quadriplegics and those suffering from other neurological conditions may someday be able to walk and lead mostly normal lives.

Source from DailyTech

45nm? 32nm? Stop playing around Intel, AMD! 1nm is where it's at.

Transistors, transistors, transistors -- the building block of every processor core we know and love. The more transistors engineers can pack into a processor, the more performance they can squeeze out of it. Rather than making processors larger, incurring all sorts of evil problems, the lithography process for etching silicon wafers to create processor cores with has been refined a hundred, maybe even a thousand-fold since its inception.

Current generation mainstream processors are floating at around 45nm transistors with Intel's Penryn chips. Penryn holds about 205 million transistors per core in its die structure, with all four cores in a quad-core chip able to fit inside the area of a dime. Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing even boasted about 32nm cores in design as long ago as 2006.

Thus far, chip engineers have been able to keep a tenuous grasp on Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors on a microchip will double every two years. Gorden Moore, who coined the idea in 1965, feels that time is running out for his now-famous prognostication with the limits of silicon lithography rapidly approaching. Many scientists and engineers feel that 10nm will be the death knell for silicon transistors.

Worry not, readers, carbon has your back. Back in March of 2007, DailyTech reported on graphene transistors. Professor Andre Geim and Dr. Kostya Novoselov at the University of Manchester's School of Physics and Astronomy announced a transistor made of graphene that measured just one atom thick and less than 50 wide. Now, they say, they've done even better, having improved their process and created a transistor one atom thick and a mere ten atoms wide. The pair claims to have a working 1nm graphene transistor.

Obviously such a ludicrously small transistor would, possibly not revolutionize, but allow the current semiconductor industry to delve even further into chip shrinkage, packing tens or hundreds of millions more transistors into a single core, or allowing many more cores to be used in the same area as current quad-core microchips.

Combined with graphene circuitry, these new ultra-small transistors could, in fact, produce microdevices of all kinds that are much more micro than in their current lives.

All the latest research pretty much agrees, silicon is out, carbon is in. Between buckyballs, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and whatever else scientists manage to cook up from the abundant element, there isn't much that carbon can't beat silicon on. The next step in computing seems to be The C; past that, get ready for yes-no-maybe quantum computing

Source From DailyTech

A crude layout of the cell phone's power systems from Samsung. (Source: Samsung)
Samsung reveals that water powered cell phones may be just years away

Samsung is a major player in the cell phone industry. Two major issues with today’s cell phones are battery life and charge times, an inconvenience to users the company is well aware of. Samsung's plans for a water powered cell phone were recently leaked; no, not that kind of water power -- the modified cell phone design does not use hydroelectricity, but rather breaks apart water and uses the hydrogen obtained for power.

The news follows in line with many advances in the small fuel cell industry. MTI Micro, a small methanol fuel cell maker, recently announced that they will be rolling out fuel cells for cameras, phone chargers, and more next year. Samsung has been among the companies investigating fuel cell stacks as battery replacements for laptops.

Samsung's new plans for water-powered cell phones utilize a metal catalyst that becomes a metal hydroxide in a reversible process, yielding hydrogen. Details on the metal and exact process are scant, so it is hard to ascertain where exactly the process is at in terms of development or exactly how it works. Likely it operates similarly to Purdue's recently discovered method of high-efficiency hydrogen production using metal, perhaps even using the same method.

While keeping tight lipped on the details, Samsung is making the bold prediction that our cell phones will be running on water by 2010. Their engineers claim that a working prototype currently provides 10 hours of use. This, according to Samsung, equates to about 5 days of life in a normal use scenario. The engineers say that they are modifying the phone to make it easy to be able to top up on the go (drinking fountain anyone?).

The idea of fast free power for your cell phone is certainly an exciting one. If Samsung can beat its competitors to market with a cell phone "battery" that in theory never dies, it certainly will be in an advantageous position. Now if they can only work on making sure you always get a signal.

Source from DailyTech

Scientists develop contact lens with imprinted electronic circuits

Of all the powers Superman boasts, the two most appealing to many of us are the power of flight and X-ray vision. While the power of flight is not likely to happen without an airplane, the superhuman vision may be just around the corner.

Engineers from the University of Washington (UW) used advanced manufacturing techniques to combine a flexible and safe contact lens suitable to be worn on the eye like any other contact lens with imprinted electronic circuits and lights.

According to Babak Parviz, associate professor of electrical engineering at UW, “Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside. This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it's extremely promising.”



The uses for such wearable contact lens displays are many from simple heads up displays while driving in your car or piloting a plane to complex systems for soldiers making the world through a soldiers eyes more like the view from a current video game.

A prototype lens was constructed that contains an electronic circuit as well as red LED lights for a display. The catch with the prototype is that the LEDs don’t light up. The researchers put the contact lens into the eyes of rabbits in animal testing for periods of up to 20 minutes without any side effects for the animals.

The researchers plan to eventually power the lenses using a combination of radio frequency power and solar cells placed on the lens according to Parviz. The large portion of the eye outside the transparent portion of the eye could be used to place the required electronics.

The prototype lens was constructed using circuits built from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick and about one thousandth the width of a human hair. A powder of electrical components was then sprinkled onto a flexible plastic sheet and capillary forces combined with the design of the electrical components in the powder being built to only connect one way constructs the components via self-assembly.

Source from DailyTech

Intel updates its cable of solid-state drives Earlier this year,
Intel shove itself into the reality of strong country drives (SSDs. The party launched the Z-U130 series of NAND flash-based SSDs which used the basic USB 2. 0 interface. Intel's Z-U130 merchandise household consisted of 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB models. Performance was quite paltry with read speeds of 28MB/sec and publish speeds of 20MB/sec.

Not one to have an other production waste in an aggressive marketplace, Intel is introducing its review to the Z-U130: the Z-P140. Intel's Z-P140 SSDs forego the USB 2. 0 port and instead take a PATA port. Due to effective promotion, the Z-P140 PATA SSDs standard just 12x18x1. 8mm -- 400 multiplication little than a 1. 8" HDD -- and consider simply 0. 6 grams. Power use is a small 1. 1mW while unused and 300mW during take/publish operations. The Mean-Time Before Failure (MTBF) of the Z-P140 PATA SSDs, which take Intel SD54B and SD58B NAND instant chips, is 2. 5 million hours.

The Z-P140 PATA SSDs are available in 2GB of 4GB modules; however, they can be expanded up to 16GB by using four 4GB modules. In addition, read and write speeds are now faster at 40MB/sec and 30MB/sec respectively.

"Our mission is to provide world-class non-volatile SSD and caching solutions that are designed, optimized and validated to enhance Intel Architecture-based computing platforms," said Pete Hazen, Intel's NAND Products Group director of marketing. "Our customers are finding the Intel Z-P140 PATA SSD to be the right size, fit and performance for their pocketable designs. This is Intel's latest offering as we continue to expand our product line of reliable, feature-rich and high-performing SSDs."

Intel's new line of SSDs aren't likely to give competing SSD manufacturers Samsung, Toshiba or Mtron much pause -- SSDs from those manufacturers come in larger 1.8" and 2.5" form-factors and are at least twice as fast in read/write operations. However, Intel is likely to target cell phone, portable media player (PMP) and UMPC vendors.

In fact, Intel's new SSDs sound like a perfect fit for a probable ASUS Eee PC 16G.

With the holiday shopping season firmly upon us one of the most wanted gifts for Christmas is a HDTV set. While we have many brands and makes to choose from here in America, the only commercially available OLED television is a Japan-only item this year.

Sony first announced its XEL-1 3mm thin waif of an HDTV in October with the caveat that the set would only be available in Japan. With the impact the thin OLED set had on gadget and home theater buffs, the Sony XEL-1 led other HDTV makers to promise OLED sets as well. Toshiba was the first to make the announcement of bringing OLED TVs to market after Sony was Toshiba. Toshiba claims it will have a 30-inch OLED TV on the global market by 2009.

Not to be outdone, Samsung announced its OLED roadmap in late October, stating the company would have OLED HDTVs in large 40-inch and 42-inch screen sizes on the market by 2010. DailyTech reported in early November that Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow said the XEL-1 could make it to America this year, providing the demand for the XEL-1 in Japan didn’t move all the thin-screened beauties Sony had produced.

Today Engadget reports that there are only a total of 2,000 Sony XEL-1 TVs available in the entire world. That means that the 2000 XEL-1 TVs will be spread across 700 stores in Japan working out to a bit more than two XEL-1 HDTVs per store.

American fans of the XEL-1, your chances of getting a set this year just got much smaller.


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At the Inter BEE 2007 taking place in Japan TechnoHouse showcased the 'Lifefast' a transparent 360° LED display unit. Manufactured by Kinoton GMBH Germany it is a cylindrical transparent display unit for displaying products. In the product, four vertical bars, each fitted with 600 three-color LEDs, are arranged at 90 degree intervals. The bars make 12 or 13 revolutions per second, thereby displaying images. The product can display three images of 600 (vertical) x 800 (horizontal) dots each, two images of 600 (vertical) x 1,200 (horizontal) dots each or one image with 600 (vertical) x 2,400 (horizontal) dots. It supports VGA, DVI and video signals. Sizes vary from 75cms to 150 cms. The Technohouse Transparent 360° 75 cm display unit is available for 700,000 Yen in Japan. (pictured above)

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Samsung to show off thinnest full HD 40-inch LCD TV around in Yokohama this week

Thin is certainly in when it comes to HDTV sets and computer displays. What is typically considered thin for a LCD or plasma HDTV is somewhere in the area of 5-inches to 6-inches thick currently. Some HDTVs are even thicker than that.

Samsung announced that it will have a new thin-film-transistor (TFT), LCD on display at FPD International 2007 in Yokohama, Japan this week. The new LCD panel has the thinnest profile ever for a full-size HDTV. The 40-inch diagonal Full HD LCD TV panel is a mere 10mm thick.

That is about the thickness of a typical 10-inch to 20-inch computer LCD display, which is significantly thinner than normal HDTV sets. The bezel of the panel has also been reduced from 30mm to 14.6mm. The screen is backlit using LEDs and can reproduce 92% of the NTSC standard for color saturation. Power consumption is reported to be 90 watts or less.

With a profile of only 10mm, Samsung can give the svelte dimensions of the recently announced Sony XEL-1 OLED TV a run for its money. The majority of home theater lovers would be willing to add 7mm to the 3mm profile of the Sony XEL-1 to gain nearly 30-inches in screen size.


Source from DailyTech

ioDATA drive promises vastly superior enterprise level read and write performance at a hefty price

Most computer users want faster hard drives to aide in faster boot times and application loading. Solid state drives (SSDs) promised to improve our load times and they did to some degree.

If a measly 64GB solid state drive just doesn’t cut it for your needs, Fusion-io has a new 640GB flash based hard drive that slips into a PCI-Express x4 slot. Fusion-io promises some very swift speeds from the drive in the neighborhood of 600 Mbytes/sec sustained write speed (4000Mbytes/sec random) and 800 Mbytes/sec sustained read (8,000 Mbytes/sec random).

The ioDrive has no moving parts to increase the lifespan and reduce the risk of failure. If more capacity is needed scaling is possible by adding more ioDrive cards to the system. The sustained data transfer rates that Fusion-io promises (PDF) are vastly superior to other enterprise level storage devices on the market such as Ultra SCSI and SAS storage devices.

Supported operating systems include Linux Red Hat AS4.0, Windows Vista and Windows XP. The catch to go along with all of the performance the ioDrive promises is that the 640GB version costs a massive $19,000 USD. Gizmodo is reporting that when the 640GB drive is released in Q1 2008 80GB, 160GB, and 320GB versions will also be available.


Source from DailyTech