Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Inflection AI raised $1.3 billion in a new funding round led by Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, and NVIDIA after raising $225 million in the first round to support the ongoing development of Pi, a “useful, friendly, and fun” AI. In partnership with CoreWeave and NVIDIA, Inflection aims to build the world’s largest AI cluster, comprised of 22,000 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core ... » read more

Research Bits: Oct. 10


Disposable water-activated battery Researchers at Empa developed a water-activated disposable paper battery that could be used in low-power, single-use disposable electronics such as smart labels for tracking objects, environmental sensors, and medical diagnostic devices. The battery is made of at least one cell measuring one centimeter squared and consisting of three inks printed onto a re... » read more

Research Bits: Sept. 20


Multi-mode memristors Researchers from ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and Empa built a new memristor that can operate in multiple modes and could potentially be used to mimic neurons in more applications. “There are different operation modes for memristors, and it is advantageous to be able to use all these modes depending on an artificial neural network’s architecture,” said R... » read more

Research Bits: May 24


Printed flexible OLED display Researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and Korea Institute of Industrial Technology used a customized 3D printer to print a flexible OLED display. “OLED displays are usually produced in big, expensive, ultra-clean fabrication facilities,” said Michael McAlpine, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Minnes... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 27


Holographic lithography Switzerland’s Nanotech SWHL GmbH has come out of stealth mode and disclosed its initial technology—a holographic lithography system. Founded in 2015, Nanotech SWHL has developed a sub-wavelength holographic lithography system that generates and prints 3D images on surfaces with one mask at one exposure. Still in R&D, the system is initially targeted for advanced ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 15


Aluminum battery materials Scientists from ETH Zurich and Empa identified two new materials that could boost the development of aluminum batteries, a potential low cost, materially abundant option for temporary storage of renewable energy. The first is a corrosion-resistant material for the conductive parts of the battery; the second is a novel material for the battery's positive pole that ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 19


Stabilizing perovskites Scientists at EPFL and the University of Cordoba found a way to improve the stability of perovskite solar cells. While perovskites show promising efficiencies as solar cells, they are soft crystalline materials and prone to problems due to decomposition over time. By introducing the large organic cation guanidinium (CH6N3+) into methylammonium lead iodide perovskites, t... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov 28


Deep learning to detect nuclear reactor cracks Inspecting nuclear power plant components for cracks is critical to preventing leaks, as well as to control in maintenance costs. But the current vision-based crack detection approaches are not very effective. Moreover, they are prone to human error, which in the case of nuclear power can be disastrous. To address this problem, Purdue Universit... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 25


Metrology for the intelligence community The semiconductor industry continues to move full speed ahead with traditional chip scaling. There are several challenges in the arena. One of the big but lessor known challenges is metrology. Metrology, the science of characterizing and measuring films and structures, is becoming more complex, challenging and expensive at each node. Looking to solv... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 16


Chaos-based IC Researchers at North Carolina State University and the College of Wooster developed a three transistor nonlinear, chaos-based integrated circuit combining digital and analog components, which they hope can improve computational power by enabling processing of a larger number of inputs. In chaos-based, nonlinear circuits, one circuit can perform multiple computations instead... » read more

← Older posts