System Bits: Aug. 30


Probing photon-electron interactions According to Rice University researchers, where light and matter intersect, the world illuminates; where they interact so strongly that they become one, they illuminate a world of new physics. Here, the team is closing in on a way to create a new condensed matter state in which all the electrons in a material act as one by manipulating them with light and a... » read more

System Bits: Aug. 16


Record-breaking quantum logic gate Reaching the benchmark required theoretically to build a quantum computer, University of Oxford researchers have achieved a quantum logic gate with record-breaking 99.9% precision. They reminded that quantum computers, which function according to the laws of quantum physics, have the potential to dwarf the processing power of today's computers, able to pro... » read more

System Bits: Aug. 9


Using trapped ions as quantum bits MIT researchers reminded that quantum computers are largely hypothetical devices that could perform some calculations much more rapidly than conventional computers can, and instead of the bits of classical computation — which can represent 0 or 1 — quantum computers consist of quantum bits, or qubits, which can, in some sense, represent 0 and 1 simultaneo... » read more

System Bits: July 26


Mixing topology, spin MIT researchers are studying new compounds, such as topological insulators (TIs), which support protected electron states on the surfaces of crystals that silicon-based technologies cannot as part of the pursuit of material platforms for the next generation of electronics. They report new physical phenomena being realized by combining this field of TIs with the subfiel... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: July 26


Flexible MRAM Researchers from the National University of Singapore, Yonsei University, Ghent University and Singapore's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering embedded a magnetic memory chip on a plastic material, flexible enough to be bent into a tube. The new device operates on magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), which uses a magnesium oxide (MgO)-based magnetic tunn... » read more

System Bits: July 19


Using carbon nanotubes to leapfrog today’s silicon chips According to Stanford University’s Subhasish Mitra, associate professor of electrical engineering and of computer science, and H.-S. Philip Wong, professor of electrical engineering, the future of supercomputing might actually be really, really small. With support from the National Science Foundation, the two are working with IBM and... » read more

System Bits: July 12


Simplifying sensor network interactions Given that the IoT consists of millions of sensing devices in buildings, vehicles and elsewhere that deliver reams of data online, and involves so many different kinds of data, sources and communication modes that its myriad information streams can be onerous to acquire and process, scientists at Georgia Tech Research Institute have developed a flexible,... » read more

System Bits: July 5


Computer vision for automated data collection Stanford University researchers have developed a computer vision system that automates the collection of data about the elements in buildings in order to streamline the remodeling or refurbishment of existing buildings, which can be fraught with delays and cost overruns due to hidden problems. Renovation projects live and die by the quality of i... » read more

System Bits: June 21


Faster running parallel programs, one-tenth the code MIT researchers reminded that computer chips have stopped getting faster and that for the past 10 years, performance improvements have come from the addition of cores. In theory, they said, a program on a 64-core machine would be 64 times as fast as it would be on a single-core machine but it rarely works out that way. Most computer programs... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 21


A chip with 1,000 processors A microchip containing 1,000 independent programmable processors has been designed by a team at the University of California, Davis. Called the KiloCore chip, it contains 621 million transistors and was fabricated by IBM using its 32nm CMOS technology. Cores operate at an average maximum clock frequency of 1.78 GHz, and they transfer data directly to each other r... » read more

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