Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 29


Wearing your batteries In spite of the progress in wearable devices, one challenge remaining is providing less obtrusive and cumbersome power sources. To tackle the problem, researchers at Case Western Reserve University developed flexible wire-shaped microsupercapacitors that can be woven into a jacket, shirt or dress. "The area of clothing is fixed, so to generate the power density need... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 23


World’s smallest inkjet image ETH Zurich and Scrona have set the official world’s record for the smallest inkjet-printed color image. The feat, which has been recognized by the Guinness World Records, is based on Scrona’s so-called NanoDrip printing technology and quantum dots. ETH and Scrona printed an image of clown fishes and sea anemones. The printed image measures 0.0092mm² in a... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 23


Building MEMS at one-hundredth the cost The microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) market was $12 billion business in 2014, dominated by a handful of devices, such as accelerometers that reorient the screens of most smartphones. However, researchers at MIT pointed out that potentially useful MEMS have languished in development because they don’t have markets large enough to justify the initia... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 23


GaN building blocks A team of engineers from Cornell University, the University of Notre Dame, and the semiconductor company IQE created gallium nitride (GaN) power diodes capable of serving as the building blocks for future GaN power switches. In spite of having many desirable features as a material, GaN is notorious for its defects and reliability issues. So the team zeroed in on device... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 15


Biologically powered chip Columbia Engineering researchers powered an integrated circuit from adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of life. They achieved this by integrating a conventional solid-state CMOS integrated circuit with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane containing ATP-powered ion pumps, opening the door to creating entirely new artificial systems that contain both b... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 15


Building chips skyscraper style With the aim of boosting electronic performance by factor of a thousand, a team of researchers led by Stanford University engineers have created a skyscraper-like chip design, based on materials more advanced than silicon. For many years, computer systems have been designed with processors and memory chips laid out like single-story structures in a suburb whe... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 15


DRAM scaling sans EUV At the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in Washington, D.C., chipmakers presented papers on several technologies, including one unlikely topic—DRAM scaling. For years, it was believed that DRAMs would hit the wall and stop scaling at 20nm or so. Then, at that point, the industry would need to migrate to a 3D DRAM structure or a next-generatio... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 8


Quantum computing At this week’s IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in Washington, D.C., chipmakers, research institutes and universities presented a plethora of papers on several subjects. A large number of papers revolve around the same theme—How to extend Moore’s Law. For this, researchers are working on a number of short- and long-term technologies to propel device... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 8


Untraceable text-messaging Anonymity networks, like Tor, which sit on top of the public Internet, were meant to conceal Web-browsing habits but recent research by MIT has shown that adversaries can infer a great deal about the sources of supposedly anonymous communications by monitoring data traffic though a few well-chosen nodes in an anonymity network. To fight this growing concern, a tea... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 8


Reducing transistor switching power One of the great challenges in electronics has been to reduce power consumption during transistor switching operation. However, engineers at University of California, Santa Barbara, and Rice University demonstrated a new transistor that switches at only 0.1 volts and reduces power dissipation by over 90% compared to state-of-the-art MOSFETs. "The steepn... » read more

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