Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 10


Finding new materials with inverse design The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) has found a new way to perform general inverse design, a technique that can accelerate the discovery of new materials. The concept of inverse design is simple. Let’s say you want to develop products with select materials. In a computer, you input the desired materials and the propertie... » read more

Light-Emitting V-Pits: An Alternative Approach toward Luminescent Indium-Rich InGaN Quantum Dots


Abstract: "Realization of fully solid-state white light emitting devices requires high efficiency blue, green, and red emitters. However, challenges remain in boosting the low quantum efficiency of long wavelength group-III-nitride light emitters through conventional quantum well growth. Here, we demonstrate a new direct metal–organic chemical vapor deposition approach to grow In-rich InGa... » read more

Batteries Have Moving Parts


The race is on to make lithium-ion batteries safer, to increase the amount of energy that can be drawn out of these devices, and to reduce the time it takes to charge them up again. Transistors and other electronic components depend on the movement of electrons, which are effectively massless and dimensionless relative to the semiconductor, metal, and dopant atoms that surround them. A batte... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 30


Universal decoding algorithm Researchers at MIT, Boston University, and Maynooth University built a silicon chip that is able to decode any error-correcting code, regardless of its structure, with maximum accuracy, using a universal decoding algorithm called Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding (GRAND). Encoded data traveling over a network is susceptible to noise, which disrupts the sig... » read more

Making BaZrS3 Chalcogenide Perovskite Thin Films by Molecular Beam Epitaxy


Abstract: We demonstrate the making of BaZrS3 thin films by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). BaZrS3 forms in the orthorhombic distorted-perovskite structure with corner-sharing ZrS6 octahedra. The single-step MBE process results in films smooth on the atomic scale, with near-perfect BaZrS3 stoichiometry and an atomically-sharp interface with the LaAlO3 substrate. The films grow epitaxially via tw... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 17


Digital fiber Researchers at MIT, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, and Rhode Island School of Design developed a digital fiber that can sense, store, analyze, and infer activity after being sewn into a shirt. "This work presents the first realization of a fabric with the ability to store and process data digitally, adding a new information content dimension to textiles and a... » read more

SpZip: Architectural Support for Effective Data Compression In Irregular Applications


Technical paper link is here. Published in: 2021 ACM/IEEE 48th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) Yifan Yang (MIT); Joel Emer (MIT / NVIDIA); Daniel Sanchez (MIT) Abstract: "Irregular applications, such as graph analytics and sparse linear algebra, exhibit frequent indirect, data-dependent accesses to single or short sequences of elements that cause high ma... » read more

The Great Quantum Computing Race


Quantum computing is heating up, as a growing number of entities race to benchmark, stabilize, and ultimately commercialize this technology. As of July 2021, a group from China appears to have taken the lead in terms of raw performance, but Google, IBM, Intel and other quantum computer developers aren’t far behind. All of that could change overnight, though. At this point, it's too early t... » read more

One-On-One: Lip-Bu Tan


Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the impact of massive increases in data across a variety of industries, the growing need for computational software, and the potential implications of U.S.-China relations. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What do you see as the biggest change for the chip industry? Tan: We're in our fifth g... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 13


Speedy data transfer Researchers from MIT, Intel, and Raytheon developed a new data transfer system that both boosts speeds and reduces energy use by taking elements from both traditional copper cables and fiber optics. "There's an explosion in the amount of information being shared between computer chips -- cloud computing, the internet, big data. And a lot of this happens over conventiona... » read more

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