“The Colorware Retro iMac blends the fun, nostalgic look of the Apple IIe with the technology of a 27-inch Retina iMac.”
Archive for the ‘computing’ category: Page 793
Mar 28, 2016
The Rise of VPUs: Giving eyes to machines
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: computing
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zZBKJTLnp_A
VPUs or Vision Processing Units, allow machines to understand the scene set in front of them.
Mar 28, 2016
Testing to Start for Computer With Chips Inspired by the Human Brain
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: business, computing, government, neuroscience
To solve some of the world’s toughest computing problems, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is getting a boost from the human brain.
The U.S. government lab will begin testing on Thursday a $1 million computer, the first of its kind, packed with 16 microprocessors that are designed to mimic the way the brain works.
The chip called TrueNorth, introduced by International Business Machines Corp. in 2014, is radically…
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Mar 28, 2016
Quantum Computers Move Closer To Reality With ‘Fredkin Gate’ Breakthrough
Posted by Aleksandar Vukovic in categories: computing, quantum physics
The development of the logic gate had long been a stumbling block in the creation of functional quantum computers.
Mar 27, 2016
Machine learning will create a new computing architecture that can do things “better than humans.”
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: computing, robotics/AI
Mar 27, 2016
Heat-assisted storage could give you 10x more space on your computer’s drive
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: computing, media & arts
If you’re always running out of room for photos, videos, and music on your laptop, then science might have the answer. Using a laser to write data to magnetic storage, researchers have been able to increase the potential data storage capacity of hard drives by as much as 10 times — a process konwn as heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR).
Our computers write, read, and store information by controlling and detecting whether tiny regions of the disk are magnetised or not. This magnetic state corresponds to either a “1” or a “0” in the binary code — known as a bit — and our files are stored across thousands (or millions) of these bits at once. So if we want more space, we need to find a way to shrink those magnetic regions — which are made up of magnetic grains. And that’s where this new development comes in.
As Gizmodo reports, the new technique relies on shrinking the size of the magnetic grains used to store data, while minimising the interference with surrounding grains, and the researchers have now done that more effectively than ever before by using a precise laser alongside a magnetic field.
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Mar 27, 2016
Alphabet’s ‘Moonshots’ Head Astro Teller: Fear Of AI And Robots Is Wildly Overblown
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: bioengineering, computing, genetics, robotics/AI
(Photo credit: AP Photo/Jack Plunkett, File)
Astro Teller is tired of the paranoia surrounding artificial intelligence and robotics. The famous computer scientist’s sensitivity around the topic may be understandable considering he bears the brunt of some of that skepticism as the head of X, the Alphabet (and formerly Google) moonshot factory working on many of the company’s futuristic AI and robotics projects.
This past weekend, Teller, whose official title is “captain of moonshots,” took to the stage at the inaugural Silicon Valley Comic Con hoping to dispel some of these misconceptions around AI. His physician wife, Danielle Teller, presented alongside him on some of the fear mongering associated with genetic engineering in humans. After their presentation, the Tellers sat down with FORBES to go deeper on the issue to explain what they hoped to accomplish with their talk.
Mar 26, 2016
Artificial Intelligence Writes Novel, Nearly Wins Japan’s Unique Literary Prize
Posted by Aleksandar Vukovic in categories: computing, robotics/AI
A novel written by artificial intelligence was a finalist in Japan’s Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. The award is named after Hoshi Shinichi, a Japanese science fiction author whose books include The Whimsical Robot and Greetings from Outer Space. The unique contest accepts submissions from humans and machines, and judges for the prize, now in its third year, weren’t told which novels were written by humans and which were penned by human-AI teams. This year was the first time the committee received submissions written by AI programs.
The AI novel is called The Day A Computer Writes A Novel, or Konpyuta ga shosetsu wo kaku hi in Japanese. It was co-written by Hishoshi Matsubara, a professor of computer science, along with his team at Future University Hakodate in Japan. According to the LA Times, their AI wrote four books, of which one made it past the first round of the prize. It was one of 1450 submissions, 11 of which were written with the help of AI programs.
According to reports, 80% of the novel had human involvement, as Matsubara and his team did the research for the novel, decided on the plot and developed the characters. The novel’s text was written entirely by the AI. The Professor’s team entered words and phrases from a sample novel into a computer in order for the AI to construct a new novel similar to it, Slate reports.
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Mar 26, 2016
Google’s Quantum Dream Machine
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: computing, quantum physics
Physicist John Martinis could deliver one of the holy grails of computing to Google—a machine that dramatically speeds up today’s applications and makes new ones possible.