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Category: computing – Page 174

A cool fix for hot chips: Advanced thermal management technology for electronic devices

The exponential miniaturization of electronic chips over time, described by Moore’s law, has played a key role in our digital age. However, the operating power of small electronic devices is significantly limited by the lack of advanced cooling technologies available.

Aiming to tackle this problem, a study published in Cell Reports Physical Science, led by researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, describes a significant increase in performance for the of electronic chips.

The most promising modern methods for chip cooling involve using microchannels embedded directly into the chip itself. These channels allow water to flow through, efficiently absorbing and transferring heat away from the source.

Additively manufactured heat exchanger beats out traditional designs

Billions of heat exchangers are in use around the world. These devices, whose purpose is to transfer heat between fluids, are ubiquitous across many commonplace applications: they appear in HVAC systems, refrigerators, cars, ships, aircraft, wastewater treatment facilities, cell phones, data centers, and petroleum refining operations, among many other settings.

Study realizes symmetry-protected molecular qubits based on cold polyatomic molecules

Over the past decades, researchers have been trying to develop increasingly advanced and powerful quantum computers, which could outperform classical computers on some tasks. To attain this, they have been trying to identify new ways to store and manipulate qubits, which are the fundamental units of information in quantum computing systems.

So far, most studies have developed that store qubits using superconducting materials, trapped ions, and the spin of electrons confined in quantum dots (i.e., tiny semiconductor-based structures).

Another promising and yet so far rarely explored platform for the storage and manipulation of qubits relies on polar polyatomic molecules, which are molecules with more than two atoms and an uneven distribution of electric charge.

Antikythera Mechanism’s intricate gears: Simulations of ancient astronomical device reveal potential jamming issues

A pair of physicists at Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, in Argentina, have created a computer simulation of the famed Antikythera Mechanism and in so doing have found that manufacturing inaccuracies may have caused the device to jam so often it would have been very nearly unusable—if it was in the condition it is now. Esteban Szigety and Gustavo Arenas have posted a paper on the arXiv preprint server describing the factors that went into their simulation and what it showed.

In 1901, divers looking for sponges off the coast of the Greek island, Antikythera, discovered a among the ruins of a sunken ship. The mysterious device was dated to the late second or early first century BCE, and from that time on there has been much debate in the regarding its purpose.

Some markings on the device suggest it could be used to track time and and even predict some others, such as the arrival of a comet, courtesy of its intricate gears and pointing indicators, by turning its hand crank. Since only one of the devices has ever been found, some have suggested it had an otherworldly origin.

Multivalley semiconductor enables optical switching in germanium for high-speed computing and communications

Opaque materials can transmit light when excited by a high-intensity laser beam. This process, known as optical bleaching, induces a nonlinear effect that temporarily alters the properties of a material. Remarkably, when the laser is switched on and off at ultrahigh speeds, the effect can be dynamically controlled, opening new possibilities for advanced optical technologies.

Multicolored optical switching is an important phenomenon with potential applications in fields such as telecommunications and optical computing. However, most materials typically exhibit single-color optical nonlinearity under intense laser illumination, limiting their use in systems requiring multicolor or multiband switching capabilities. Currently, most optical switches are based on , which require an electric voltage or current to operate, resulting in slow response times.

To address this gap, a group of researchers, led by Professor Junjun Jia from the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Waseda University, Japan, in collaboration with Professor Hui Ye and Dr. Hossam A. Almossalami from the College of Optical Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University, China, Professor Naoomi Yamada from the Department of Applied Chemistry at Chubu University, Japan, and Dr. Takashi Yagi from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan, investigated the multivalley optical switching phenomenon in germanium (Ge) films.

Physicists develop compact, mid-infrared pulse generator on single chip

Physicists at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a compact laser that emits extremely bright, short pulses of light in a useful but difficult-to-achieve wavelength range, packing the performance of larger photonic devices onto a single chip.

Published in Nature, the research is the first demonstration of an on-chip, picosecond, mid-infrared laser pulse generator that requires no external components to operate.

The device can make what’s called an , a spectrum of light consisting of equally spaced frequency lines (like a comb), used today in precision measurements. The new laser chip could one day speed the creation of highly sensitive, broad-spectrum gas sensors for environmental monitoring, or new types of spectroscopy tools for medical imaging.

EarEEG — Earbuds that read your mind

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Communication between brain activity and computers, known as brain-computer interface or BCI, has been used in clinical trials to monitor epilepsy and other brain disorders. BCI has also shown promise as a technology to enable a user to move a prosthesis simply by neural commands. Tapping into the basic BCI concept would make smart phones smarter than ever.

Research has zeroed in on retrofitting wireless earbuds to detect neural signals. The data would then be transmitted to a smartphone via Bluetooth. Software at the smartphone end would translate different brain wave patterns into commands. The emerging technology is called Ear EEG.

Rikky Muller, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has refined the physical comfort of EEG earbuds and has demonstrated their ability to detect and record brain activity. With support from the Bakar Fellowship Program, she is building out several applications to establish Ear EEG as a new platform technology to support consumer and health monitoring apps.

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