Lifeboat Foundation

To meet soaring demand for lightning-quick mobile technology, each year tech giants create faster, more powerful devices with longer-lasting battery power than previous models.

A major reason companies like Apple and Samsung can miraculously pull this off year after year is because engineers and researchers around the world are designing increasingly power-efficient microchips that still deliver high speeds.

To that end, researchers led by a team at Brigham Young University have just built the world’s most power-efficient high-speed analog-to–digital converter (ADC) microchip. An ADC is a tiny piece of technology present in almost every electronic piece of equipment that converts analog signals (like a radio wave) to a digital signal.

The continuing miniaturization of electronics is opening up some exciting possibilities when it comes to what we might place in our bodies to monitor and improve our health. Engineers at Columbia University have demonstrated an extreme version of this technology, developing the smallest single-chip system ever created, which could be implanted with a hypodermic needle to measure temperature inside the body, and possibly much more.

From ladybug-sized implants that track oxygen levels in deep body tissues to tiny “neural dust” sensors that monitor nerve signals in real time, scientists are making big steps when it comes to the functionality of tiny electronic devices. The implant developed by the Columbia Engineers breaks new ground as the world’s smallest single-chip system, which is a completely functional electronic circuit with a total volume of less than 0.1 mm³.

That makes it as small as a dust mite, and only visible under a microscope. The tiny chip required some outside-the-box thinking to make, particularly when it comes to the way it communicates and is powered.

Researchers at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics published a paper last week that just might explain a mysterious gap in planet sizes beyond our solar system. Planets between 1.5 and 2 times Earth’s radius are strikingly rare. This new research suggests that the reason might be because planets slightly larger than this, called mini-Neptunes, lose their atmospheres over time, shrinking to become ‘super-Earths’ only slightly larger than our home planet. These changing planets only briefly have a radius the right size to fill the gap, quickly shrinking beyond it. The implication for planetary science is exciting, as it affirms that planets are not static objects, but evolving and dynamic worlds.

Exoplanet research is a very young field. As recently as 1992, no one had ever seen a planet beyond our solar system. Today, we’ve discovered more than 4700 of them, and that number is growing rapidly due to the efforts of dedicated planet-hunting space telescopes like Kepler (now defunct) and its successor, TESS. We’ve suddenly gained an enormous new sample size of planets to study, beyond the eight planets (sorry Pluto) that orbit around our sun.

Kepler, TESS, and other planet hunters have discovered brand new types of planets, like so-called ‘hot-Jupiters,’ large gas giants that orbit very close to their star. These were among the first exoplanets observed because their large size made them easy to find, and their small, fast orbital periods meant we could see them pass in front of their star more than once in a short period of time (some hot-Jupiters have a year that lasts only a few Earth days).

If you’ve been to your local beach, you may have noticed the wind tossing around litter such as an empty potato chip bag or a plastic straw. These plastics often make their way into the ocean, affecting not only marine life and the environment but also threatening food safety and human health.

Eventually, many of these plastics break down into microscopic sizes, making it hard for scientists to quantify and measure them. Researchers call these incredibly small fragments nanoplastics and microplastics because they are not visible to the naked eye. Now, in a multiorganizational effort led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), researchers are turning to a lower part of the food chain to solve this problem.

The researchers have developed a novel method that uses a filter-feeding marine species to collect these tiny plastics from ocean water. The team published its findings as a proof-of-principle study in the scientific journal Microplastics and Nanoplastics.

Atomically thin materials are a promising alternative to silicon-based transistors; now researchers can connect them more efficiently to other chip elements.

Moore’s Law, the famous prediction that the number of transistors that can be packed onto a microchip will double every couple of years, has been bumping into basic physical limits. These limits could bring decades of progress to a halt, unless new approaches are found.

One new direction being explored is the use of atomically thin materials instead of silicon as the basis for new transistors, but connecting those “2D” materials to other conventional electronic components has proved difficult.

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Rapid SSD is a lipstick-sized SSD that can connect to Apple Lightning, USB-C, and USB-A without any attachment or cable.

The company wants to develop new human-computer interactions. Will we be able to trust it with a new form of personal data?

Early in the testing phase of Apple’s M1 chipset, a milestone new product for the company, the processor was installed in a batch of Mac computers and given to staffers working on applications that demanded heavy processing power. It was a pivotal moment: the first time Apple had made its own chip for any of its computers, shifting away from years of using a one-size-fits-all option from Intel.

After multiple teams tested the devices for a few hours while working on tasks, they reported lightning-fast performance but nearly all flagged an apparent problem. The MacBook Pro’s battery indicator, featured on the upper right hand corner of the computers, was broken. It had barely moved despite running power-hungry programs, the company told CNN Business.

The gag, of course, is that the battery indicator was working just fine. The M1 chip was so efficient, according to Apple, that it showed no real strain — one of several major selling points for products that now carry the chip. (Apple promises 20 hours of battery life for its 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro — what it says is the longest battery in any Mac to date).

The continued growth of wireless and cellular data traffic relies heavily on light waves. Microwave photonics is the field of technology that is dedicated to the distribution and processing of electrical information signals using optical means. Compared with traditional solutions based on electronics alone, microwave photonic systems can handle massive amounts of data. Therefore, microwave photonics has become increasingly important as part of 5G cellular networks and beyond. A primary task of microwave photonics is the realization of narrowband filters: The selection of specific data, at specific frequencies, out of immense volumes that are carried over light.

Many microwave photonic systems are built of discrete, separate components and long optical fiber paths. However, the cost, size, power consumption and production volume requirements of advanced networks call for a new generation of microwave photonic systems that are realized on a chip. Integrated microwave photonic filters, particularly in silicon, are highly sought after. There is, however, a fundamental challenge: Narrowband filters require that signals are delayed for comparatively long durations as part of their processing.

“Since the speed of light is so fast,” says Prof. Avi Zadok from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, “we run out of chip space before the necessary delays are accommodated. The required delays may reach over 100 nanoseconds. Such delays may appear to be short considering daily experience; however, the optical paths that support them are over ten meters long. We cannot possibly fit such long paths as part of a silicon chip. Even if we could somehow fold over that many meters in a certain layout, the extent of optical power losses to go along with it would be prohibitive.”