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Archive for the ‘computing’ category: Page 282

Nov 2, 2021

Is Neuralink Real? Yes — Human Trials Start In 2020/21…

Posted by in categories: computing, Elon Musk, humor, mobile phones, neuroscience

The concept and technology behind Neuralink are so far ahead of what we’ve grown accustomed to that it might as well be magic. Make no mistake Neuralink is happening and it’ll be here sooner than you think…

I remember the first time I heard about Neuralink. I thought it was a joke or something far off in the future. Then I heard Elon Musk was behind it and immediately knew that this bonkers technology would be with us a lot sooner than any of us imagined.

Continue reading “Is Neuralink Real? Yes — Human Trials Start In 2020/21…” »

Nov 2, 2021

New Optical Switch Is Up to 1,000 Times Faster Than Silicon Transistors

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics

It consists of a 35-nanometer-wide film made out of an organic semiconductor sandwiched between two mirrors that create a microcavity, which keeps light trapped inside. When a bright “pump” laser is shone onto the device, photons from its beam couple with the material to create a conglomeration of quasiparticles known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, a collection of particles that behaves like a single atom.

A second weaker laser can be used to switch the condensate between two levels with different numbers of quasiparticles. The level with more particles represents the “on” state of a transistor, while the one with fewer represents the “off” state.

What’s most promising about the new device, described in a paper in Nature, is that it can be switched between its two states a trillion times a second, which is somewhere between 100 and 1,000 times faster than today’s leading commercial transistors. It can also be switched by just a single photon, which means it requires far less energy to drive than a transistor.

Nov 2, 2021

What chip shortage? AMD books capacity years ahead to ease crunches

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, mobile phones

LISBON, Nov 2 (Reuters) — Chip designer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) has been able to skirt most of the problems linked with the global chip supply shortage by forecasting demand years in advance, a top executive said on Tuesday.

Demand for electronics gadgets from people stuck in homes due to the pandemic has led to a shortage of semiconductors that are used from anything from mobile phones and cars.

But despite a squeeze in supply, AMD has been able to take market share away from rival Intel (INTC.O) in both PCs and servers with its latest line of processors.

Nov 2, 2021

Does reality exist? | Anil Seth, Sabine Hossenfelder, Massimo Pigliucci & Anders Sandberg

Posted by in categories: computing, cosmology, Elon Musk, neuroscience, quantum physics, transhumanism

Sabine Hossenfelder, Anil Seth, Massimo Pigliucci & Anders Sandberg discuss whether humanity is stuck in the matrix.

If you enjoy this video check out more content on the mind, reality and reason from the world’s biggest speakers at https://iai.tv/debates-and-talks?channel=philosophy%3Amind-a…the-matrix.

Continue reading “Does reality exist? | Anil Seth, Sabine Hossenfelder, Massimo Pigliucci & Anders Sandberg” »

Nov 2, 2021

Researchers discover predictable behavior in promising material for computer memory

Posted by in categories: computing, materials

In the last few years, a class of materials called antiferroelectrics has been increasingly studied for its potential applications in modern computer memory devices. Research has shown that antiferroelectric-based memories might have greater energy efficiency and faster read and write speeds than conventional memories, among other appealing attributes. Further, the same compounds that can exhibit antiferroelectric behavior are already integrated into existing semiconductor chip manufacturing processes.

Now, a team led by Georgia Tech researchers has discovered unexpectedly familiar behavior in the antiferroelectric material known as zirconium dioxide, or zirconia. They show that as the microstructure of the material is reduced in size, it behaves similarly to much better understood materials known as ferroelectrics. The findings were recently published in the journal Advanced Electronic Materials.

Miniaturization of circuits has played a key role in improving memory performance over the last fifty years. Knowing how the properties of an antiferroelectric change with shrinking size should enable the design of more effective memory components.

Nov 2, 2021

Ventilation matters: Engineering airflow to avoid spreading COVID-19

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, engineering

As we approach two full years of the COVID-19 pandemic, we now know it spreads primarily through airborne transmission. The virus rides inside tiny microscopic droplets or aerosol ejected from our mouths when we speak, shout, sing, cough, or sneeze. It then floats within the air, where it can be inhaled by and transmitted.

This inspired researchers in India to explore how we can better understand and engineer airflow to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19. To do this, they used their knowledge of airflow around aircraft and engines to tailor the airflow within indoor spaces.

In Physics of Fluids, they report computer simulations of airflow within a public washroom showing infectious aerosols in can linger up to 10 times longer than the rest of the room. These dead zones of trapped air are frequently found in corners of a room or around furniture.

Nov 2, 2021

The Jiuzhang 2.0 Photonic Quantum Computer

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics

The research team lead by professor Pan Jian-Wei has upgraded their photonic quantum computer, demonstrating in a new published study phase-programmable Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) which produces up to 113 photon detection events out of a 144-mode photonic circuit. According to the researchers, the Jiuzhang 2.0 Photonic Quantum Computer (九章二号) is 10 billion times faster than its earlier version. The study “Phase-Programmable Gaussian Boson Sampling Using Stimulated Squeezed Light” was published in the journal Physical Review.

Credit: China Media Group(CMG)/China Central Television (CCTV)

Nov 2, 2021

Researchers move closer to controlling two-dimensional graphene

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

The device you are currently reading this article on was born from the silicon revolution. To build modern electrical circuits, researchers control silicon’s current-conducting capabilities via doping, which is a process that introduces either negatively charged electrons or positively charged “holes” where electrons used to be. This allows the flow of electricity to be controlled and for silicon involves injecting other atomic elements that can adjust electrons—known as dopants—into its three-dimensional (3D) atomic lattice.

Silicon’s 3D lattice, however, is too big for next-generation electronics, which include ultra-thin transistors, new devices for optical communication, and flexible bio-sensors that can be worn or implanted in the human body. To slim things down, researchers are experimenting with materials no thicker than a single sheet of atoms, such as . But the tried-and-true method for doping 3D silicon doesn’t work with 2D graphene, which consists of a single of carbon atoms that doesn’t normally conduct a current.

Rather than injecting dopants, researchers have tried layering on a “charge-transfer layer” intended to add or pull away electrons from the graphene. However, previous methods used “dirty” materials in their charge-transfer layers; impurities in these would leave the graphene unevenly doped and impede its ability to conduct electricity.

Nov 2, 2021

A superconducting silicon-photonic chip for quantum communication

Posted by in categories: computing, nanotechnology, quantum physics

Integrated quantum photonics (IQP) is a promising platform for realizing scalable and practical quantum information processing. Up to now, most of the demonstrations with IQP focus on improving the stability, quality, and complexity of experiments for traditional platforms based on bulk and fiber optical elements. A more demanding question is: “Are there experiments possible with IQP that are impossible with traditional technology?”

This question is answered affirmatively by a team led jointly by Xiao-Song Ma and Labao Zhang from Nanjing University, and Xinlun Cai from Sun Yat-sen University, China. As reported in Advanced Photonics, the team realizes quantum communication using a chip based on silicon photonics with a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD). The excellent performance of this chip allows them to realize optimal time-bin Bell state measurement and to significantly enhance the key rate in quantum communication.

The single photon detector is a key element for quantum key distribution (QKD) and highly desirable for photonic chip integration to realize practical and scalable quantum networks. By harnessing the unique high-speed feature of the optical waveguide-integrated SNSPD, the dead time of single-photon detection is reduced by more than an order of magnitude compared to the traditional normal-incidence SNSPD. This in turn allows the team to resolve one of the long-standing challenges in quantum optics: Optimal Bell-state measurement of time-bin encoded .

Nov 1, 2021

Neuroscience’s Existential Crisis

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience

On a chilly evening last fall, I stared into nothingness out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office on the outskirts of Harvard’s campus. As a purplish-red sun set, I sat brooding over my dataset on rat brains. I thought of the cold windowless rooms in downtown Boston, home to Harvard’s high-performance computing center, where computer servers were holding on to a precious 48 terabytes of my data. I have recorded the 13 trillion numbers in this dataset as part of my Ph.D. experiments, asking how the visual parts of the rat brain respond to movement.

Printed on paper, the dataset would fill 116 billion pages, double-spaced. When I recently finished writing the story of my data, the magnum opus fit on fewer than two dozen printed pages. Performing the experiments turned out to be the easy part. I had spent the last year agonizing over the data, observing and asking questions. The answers left out large chunks that did not pertain to the questions, like a map leaves out irrelevant details of a territory.

But, as massive as my dataset sounds, it represents just a tiny chunk of a dataset taken from the whole brain. And the questions it asks—Do neurons in the visual cortex do anything when an animal can’t see? What happens when inputs to the visual cortex from other brain regions are shut off?—are small compared to the ultimate question in neuroscience: How does the brain work?