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Category: computing – Page 3

New cryogenic silicon carbide hardware addresses quantum computing bottleneck

Researchers from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Centre for Advanced Semiconductors and Integrated Circuits (CASIC) have achieved a major breakthrough in cryogenic electronics. The team has developed a programmable neuromorphic hardware platform that operates near absolute zero, providing a potential solution for scaling up quantum computers and enabling deep-space exploration. The discovery was published in Nature Communications in an article titled “Cryogenic neuromorphic circuits using gate-controlled negative differential resistance in silicon carbide.”

Led by Professor Yuhao Zhang and Ph.D. student Xin Yang, the team discovered an innovative way to generate and control negative differential resistance (NDR) in industry-standard silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs. For the first time, they demonstrated that a single transistor can mimic the energy-efficient “spiking” behavior of biological neurons at temperatures as low as 10 mK.

Modern quantum computers rely on complex electronics to control qubits, which are extremely sensitive and must be maintained at millikelvin temperatures. Current silicon-based controllers generate excessive heat and consume high levels of power, forcing them to be placed far from the qubits. This separation creates a wiring bottleneck that limits the scalability and performance of quantum systems.

Physicists create new family of Schrödinger-cat states

Quantum mechanics, unlike classical physics, allows objects to exist in more than one state at the same time. This idea is often illustrated by Schrödinger’s cat, imagined as being both alive and dead until it is observed. In the laboratory, physicists can create less dramatic but very real versions of this effect by placing atoms, light or motion into two distinct quantum states at once. Creating and controlling these superpositions is essential for applications ranging from quantum computing to precision timekeeping.

A simple example is a quantum bit, or qubit, in a superposition of both 0 and 1. But quantum systems are not limited to just two states. In a quantum harmonic oscillator, which can occupy many different energy levels, there is a much richer set of possibilities. Quantum harmonic oscillators describe many physical systems, including light, vibrations and the motion of trapped particles, and have been used to create a wide variety of quantum superpositions. One well-known example is a “cat state,” in which an oscillator is placed in a superposition of two wave packets displaced in opposite directions. These wave packets, known as coherent states, resemble classical motion as closely as quantum mechanics allows.

Researchers at the University of Oxford have now demonstrated a new family of quantum superpositions. Instead of building catlike states from coherent-state wave packets, they developed a method for creating superpositions from a broad range of components that are themselves highly nonclassical. In examples such as squeezed-state superpositions, quantum uncertainty is redistributed differently in each part of the state. The research is published in the journal Physical Review X.

Nickelate superconductors share a common electronic fingerprint

Superconductors, materials that conduct electricity with zero electrical resistance at specific temperature ranges, have proved very promising for the development of quantum computers and other cutting-edge technologies. While most of these materials become superconducting at very low temperatures, others exhibit superconductivity at higher temperatures.

Two types of materials that are known to be high-temperature semiconductors are cuprates (i.e., compounds containing negatively charged copper ions) and nickelates (i.e., compounds that contain negatively charged nickel-oxygen ions). While cuprates have been known to be superconductors for decades, nickelates were only recently found to exhibit superconductivity at unusually high temperatures.

Researchers at University of British Columbia (UBC), Argonne National Laboratory, and the Canadian Light Source (CLS), carried out a study aimed at better understanding how the electronic structure of nickelates contributes to their superconductivity.

Predictive surrogates could cut quantum computing measurement overhead by more than 99.97%

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, have the potential of outperforming classical computers on some tasks. Despite their potential, the use of these systems remains very limited, due to their high cost and other challenges that have so far prevented their large-scale fabrication.

Researchers at the Henan Key Laboratory of Quantum Information and Cryptography and Nanyang Technological University have developed predictive surrogates, new computational models that can learn and reproduce the outputs of quantum processors.

These models, introduced in a paper published in Nature Communications, could be used to extract useful information from quantum computers and perform computations more efficiently with provable guarantees, even if users do not have direct access to advanced and expensive quantum computing hardware.

Magnetic Fields May Solve a Longstanding Binary Star Mystery

Magnetic fields may be the hidden force bringing both newborn stars and giant black holes together. New computer simulations suggest that magnetic fields play a crucial role in helping pairs of young stars form. The findings could explain why binary star systems are so common throughout the Milky

One-Character Linux Kernel Flaw Enables Local Root Access, Exploits Now Public

FuzzingLabs reproduced the bug on RHEL 10 ahead of Pwn2Own Berlin 2026, building its own root exploit by a different route. The timeline is tight: the fix shipped February 5, FuzzingLabs published April 16, and Exodus’s detailed write-up landed June 8.

The technique is now documented across Debian, Ubuntu, and Red Hat. Because the bug is in the mainline, any distribution that shipped a vulnerable kernel with both features enabled is exposed, unless a distribution’s hardening or namespace restrictions block the path.

CVE-2026–23111 lands in the middle of a heavy run of Linux local-root disclosures. Recent weeks have brought Copy Fail, the Dirty Frag chain, its Fragnesia variant, DirtyDecrypt, and a nine-year-old ptrace flaw that reads /etc/shadow and runs commands as root.

Organic transistor unites memory, signal processing and light emission below 3.5 V

Seoul National University researchers have developed an ultra-low-voltage electrochemical organic light-emitting transistor that can simultaneously perform signal processing, memory and light emission within a single semiconductor device. By introducing an ion-transport enhancer into the light-emitting polymer semiconductor channel, the team enabled electric-double-layer formation at the drain electrode interface, allowing efficient electron injection without relying on the high voltages or unstable n-type doping used in conventional approaches.

As a result, the device maintained a simple single-active-layer structure while achieving both low-voltage operation and wide, spatially pinned light emission, together with neuromorphic signal-processing functionality.

The work is published in the journal Nature Materials.

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