For the first time, researchers are able to extend the lifetime of a quantum bit, or qubit, using error correction – an essential step to useful quantum computers.
Category: computing – Page 874
AI on a chip for voice, image recognition
Horizon Robotics, led by Yu Kai, Baidu’s former deep learning head, is developing AI chips and software to mimic how the human brain solves abstract tasks, such as voice and image recognition. The company believes that this will provide more consistent and reliable services than cloud based systems.
The goal is to enable fast and intelligent responses to user commands, with out an internet connection, to control appliances, cars, and other objects. Health applications are a logical next step, although not yet discussed.
Wearable Tech + Digital Health San Francisco – April 5, 2016 @ the Mission Bay Conference Center.
Dropbox open-sources Lepton, a compression algorithm that cuts JPEG file size
Cloud syncing and sharing software company Dropbox today announced that it has released an image compression algorithm called Lepton under an Apache open source license on GitHub.
Lepton can both compress and decompress files, and for the latter, it can work while streaming — that is, files can be expanded back into full size as they are being sent over the network. So Lepton is important for user experience, given how it can more quickly transfer data and show content. But at the same time, it has an impact on the data center infrastructure where files often end up.
“We have used Lepton to encode 16 billion images saved to Dropbox, and are rapidly recoding our older images. Lepton has already saved Dropbox multiple petabytes of space,” Dropbox software systems architect Daniel Reiter Horn wrote in a blog post.
Researchers develop plastic flexible magnetic memory device
It looks like a small piece of transparent film with tiny engravings on it, and is flexible enough to be bent into a tube. Yet, this piece of “smart” plastic demonstrates excellent performance in terms of data storage and processing capabilities. This novel invention, developed by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS), hails a breakthrough in the flexible electronics revolution, and brings researchers a step closer towards making flexible, wearable electronics a reality in the near future.
The technological advancement is achieved in collaboration with researchers from Yonsei University, Ghent University and Singapore’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. The research team has successfully embedded a powerful magnetic memory chip on a flexible plastic material, and this malleable memory chip will be a critical component for the design and development of flexible and lightweight devices. Such devices have great potential in applications such as automotive, healthcare electronics, industrial motor control and robotics, industrial power and energy management, as well as military and avionics systems.
World’s Smallest Hard Drive Writes Data Atom-By-Atom
Meet the world’s smallest hard drive.
Dutch scientists have developed a unique solution to deal with the data storage problem. By manipulating single atoms, researchers have created the world’s smallest hard drive capable of storing 1 kilobyte of data (8000 bits) in a space under 100 nanometers across. The technology means that all the books in the world could be stored on a device the size of a postage stamp.
In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, scientists from the Technical University of Delft (TU Delft) said that they have created an atomic hard drive with a storage density that is 500 times greater than current hard drive technology.
Associate Professor at TU Delft and lead researcher Sander Otte and his team found that placing chlorine atoms on a copper surface created the perfect square grid. A hole appears in the grid when an atom is missing. Using a scanning tunneling microscope, scientists were able to move atoms around one by one and even drag individual atoms toward the hole.
DARPA tackling reusable, modular chipset technology
More information on DARPA’s efforts in build new interface standards for modular design & practical circuit blocks.
Is it possible to develop chip technology that combines the high-performance characteristics of ASICS with the speedy, low-cost features of printed circuit boards?
Scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency this week said they were looking for information on how to build interface standards that would enable modular design and practical circuit blocks that could be reused to greatly shorten electronics development time and cost.
+More on Network World: DARPA: Researchers develop chip part that could double wireless frequency capacity +
One technique for addressing rising cost and complexity has been the use of a modular design flow that subdivides a system into functional circuit blocks, called IP blocks, DARPA stated. “IP block refers to intellectual property captured in a pre-designed functional circuit block. Examples of IP blocks include, but are not limited to, timing circuits, filters, waveform generators, embedded processors, data converters, amplifiers, fast Fourier transforms, serializer-deserializers and memory,” the agency stated.
Is MIND-CONTROL the future of warfare?
Although BMI is nothing new; I never get tired of highlighting it.
Now the group has come up with a way for one person to control multiple robots.
The system works using one controller who watches the drones, while his thoughts are read using a computer.
The controller wears a skull cap fitted with 128 electrodes wired to a computer. The device records electrical brain activity. If the controller moves a hand or thinks of something, certain areas light up.
Another Big Shrink: Tiling Chiplets into Next-Generation Microsystems
Open the hood of just about any electronic gadget and you probably will find printed circuit boards (PCBs)—most often in a leaf-green color—studded with processing, memory, data-relaying, graphics, and other types of chips and components, all interconnected with a labyrinth of finely embossed wiring. By challenging the technology community to integrate the collective functions hosted by an entire PCB onto a device approaching the size of a single chip, DARPA’s newest program is making a bid to usher in a fresh dimension of technology miniaturization.
“We are trying to push the massive amount of integration you typically get on a printed circuit board down into an even more compact format,” said Dr. Daniel Green, manager of the new program, whose acronym, “CHIPS,” is itself a typographic feat of miniaturization; the program’s full name is the Common Heterogeneous Integration and Intellectual Property (IP) Reuse Strategies Program. “It’s not just a fun acronym,” Green said. “The program is all about devising a physical library of component chips, or chiplets, that we can assemble in a modular fashion.”
A primary driver of CHIPS is to develop a novel, industry-friendly architectural strategy for designing and building new generations of microsystems in which the time and energy it takes to move signals—that is, data—between chips is reduced by factors of tens or even hundreds. “This is increasingly important for the data-intensive processing that we have to do as the data sets we are dealing with get bigger and bigger,” Green said. Although the program does not specify applications, the new architectural strategy at the program’s heart could open new routes to computational efficiencies required for such feats as identifying objects and actions in real-time video feeds, real-time language translation, and coordinating motion on-the-fly among swarms of fast-moving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).