Lifeboat Foundation

While semiconductor lithography gets the bulk of the attention in chipmaking, other processes are equally important in producing working integrated circuits (ICs). Case in point: packaging. An IC package provides the electrical, thermal, and mechanical transition from the semiconductor die or chip to the circuit board, which is often called a motherboard. One key element of the IC package is the substrate, which is essentially a miniature circuit board with copper traces that bonds to the input/output (I/O), power and ground pads on the chip and electrically connects these pads to the circuit board. The substrate provides a solid mechanical home for the chip and is also thermally matched to… More.

The release also quotes Babak Sabi, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Assembly and Test Development, who said: “After a decade of research, Intel has achieved industry-leading glass substrates for advanced packaging. We look forward to delivering these cutting-edge technologies that will benefit our key players and foundry customers for decades to come.”

Research into using glass substrates for chipmaking is nothing new. As Intel’s release says, the company has been working on this technology for at least a decade, as have other organizations such as the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center located at Georgia Tech, which was founded in 1994 – nearly 30 years ago. Last year, the Georgia Tech PRC launched an industry advisory board with Intel Fellow Ravi Mahajan as one of the initial board members. Intel has already spent more than a billion dollars to develop a glass-substrate manufacturing facility at its site in Chandler, Arizona.

Continue reading “Intel’s Glass Substrates Are Essential For Future IC Development” »

A new record time for quantum coherence is reported, with a single-photon qubit encoded for 34 milliseconds. This is 55% longer than the previous record set in 2020.

In classical computing – such as the PC, smartphone, or other device you are currently using – information is processed with bits, which exist in a binary state of either a 0 or a 1. Quantum computing, by contrast, involves the processing of information with quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in a “superposition” of both 0 and 1 simultaneously. This allows quantum computers to do certain types of calculations much faster than classical computers.

Attention Linux and macOS users! Critical vulnerabilities in the ncurses library have been discovered.

A demonstration that certain electron-transport processes can be tuned in a hybrid semiconductor-superconductor system could be useful for developing quantum computers.

Designed to manoeuvre the smallest classes of satellite, the operation of this Iridium Catalysed Electrolysis CubeSat Thruster (ICE-Cube Thruster) developed with Imperial College in the UK is based on electrolysis.

This tiny fingernail-length space thruster chip runs on the greenest propellant of all: water.

Avoiding any need for bulky gaseous propellant storage, an associated electrolyser runs a 20-watt current through water to produce hydrogen and oxygen to propel the thruster.

Any physical object, alive or inanimate, is composed of atoms and subatomic particles that interact in different ways governed by the principles of quantum mechanics. Some particles are in a pure state—they remain fixed and unchanged. Others are in a quantum state—a concept that can be difficult to understand because it involves having a particle occupy multiple states simultaneously. For instance, an electron in a pure state spins up or down; in a quantum state, also referred to as superposition, it spins up and down simultaneously. Another quantum principle states that particles can be in a state of entanglement in which changes in one directly affect the other. The principles of superposition and entanglement are fundamental to quantum computing.

Quantum bits, or qubits, are the smallest units of data that a quantum computer can process and store. In a pure state, qubits have a value of 1 or 0, similar to the bits used in computing today. In superposition, they can be both of these values simultaneously, and that enables parallel computations on a massive scale. While classical computers must conduct a new calculation any time a variable changes, quantum computers can explore a problem with many possible variables simultaneously.

Existing computers, although sufficient for many applications, can’t fully support all of the changes required to create a connected and intelligent-mobility ecosystem. Quantum computing (QC) could potentially provide faster and better solutions by leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics—the rules that govern how atoms and subatomic particles act and interact. (See sidebar, “Principles of quantum computing,” for more information). Over the short term, QC may be most applicable to solving complex problems involving small data sets; as its performance improves, QC will be applied to extremely large datasets.

Researchers in Germany and Japan have been able to increase the diffusion of magnetic whirls, so-called skyrmions, by a factor of ten.

In today’s world, our lives are unimaginable without computers. Up until now, these devices process information using primarily electrons as charge carriers, with the components themselves heating up significantly in the process. Active cooling is thus necessary, which comes with high energy costs. Spintronics aims to solve this problem: Instead of utilizing the electron flow for information processing, it relies on their spin or their intrinsic angular momentum. This approach is expected to have a positive impact on the size, speed, and sustainability of computers or specific components.

Magnetic whirls store and process information.

🏅 R&D 100 Award Winner 🏅

The Noncontact Laser Ultrasound (NCLUS) is a portable laser-based system that acquires ultrasound images of human tissue without touching a patient. It offers capabilities comparable to those of an MRI and CT but at vastly lower cost in an automated and portable platform.

In addition to receiving an R&D 100 Award, NCLUS received the Silver Medal in the Special Recognition: Market Disruptor Products category. Congratulations to the NCLUS team!

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For eons, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has served as a sort of instruction manual for life, providing not just templates for a vast array of chemical structures but a means of managing their production.

In recent years engineers have explored a subtly new role for the molecule’s unique capabilities, as the basis for a biological computer. Yet in spite of the passing of 30 years since the first prototype, most DNA computers have struggled to process more than a few tailored algorithms.

A team researchers from China has now come up with a DNA integrated circuit (DIC) that’s far more general purpose. Their liquid computer’s gates can form an astonishing 100 billion circuits, showing its versatility with each capable of running its own program.