Wireless Charging Creeps Forward


It's well known that electricity can travel long distances through the air, but expanding beyond the boundaries of a wire has never seemed a practical or reliable way to power delicate electronics. In fact, wireless power has been widely available for years. Whether this approach will be used to extend battery life isn't entirely clear. But it is attracting renewed attention as the balance b... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 27


Encryption chip A team at MIT developed a new chip to lower the power consumption of public-key cryptography for IoT devices. Software execution of encryption protocols require more energy and memory space than embedded IoT sensors can typically spare, given the need to maximize battery life. The new chip is hardwired to perform public-key encryption and consumes only 1/400 as much power as... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 20


An evolution in electronics Restoring some semblance to those who have lost the sensation of touch has been a driving force behind Stanford University chemical engineer Zhenan Bao’s decades-long quest to create stretchable, electronically-sensitive synthetic materials. [caption id="attachment_24131783" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Zhenan Bao, the K.K. Lee professor of chemical engineer... » read more

Ayar Labs: Faster I/O


Startup AyarLabs is using a combination of high-bandwidth fiberoptics, low-cost CMOS fabrication and careful target selection to strike efficiently at the datacenter's worst bottleneck. "Moore's Law only covers the processor, not how we move data in and out of it during processing or how to get the processor and memory working at the same speed," according to Alexandra Wright-Gladstein, co-f... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 13


Enabling individual manufacturing apps Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD focused on Industrie 4.0 recognize that manufacturing is turning toward batch sizes of one and individualized production in what is sometimes referred to as ‘highly customized mass production.’ [caption id="attachment_24131609" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The scanning ... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 30


Lab-in-the-cloud Although Internet-connected smart devices have penetrated numerous industries and private homes, the technological phenomenon has left the research lab largely untouched, according to MIT researchers. Spreadsheets, individual software programs, and even pens and paper remain standard tools for recording and sharing data in academic and industry labs — until now. TetraScie... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 23


Artificial synapse for “brain-on-a-chip” portable AI devices In the emerging field of neuromorphic computing, researchers are attempting to design computer chips that work like the human brain, which, instead of carrying out computations based on binary, on/off signaling like digital chips do today, the elements of a brain-on-a-chip would work in an analog fashion, exchanging a gradient of... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 23


Atomristors for thin memory Engineers at The University of Texas at Austin and Peking University developed a thin memory storage device with dense memory capacity. Dubbed "atomristors," the device enables 3-D integration of nanoscale memory with nanoscale transistors on the same chip. "For a long time, the consensus was that it wasn't possible to make memory devices from materials that were... » read more

Self-Driving Cars And Kobayashi Maru


Kobayashi Maru. If you know what I am talking about, you are a bona fide Star Trek fan. If not, let me indulge. Kobayashi Maru is a computer simulation for a training exercise in the fictional Star Trek universe, where Starfleet Academy cadets are presented with a no-win scenario. But they do have to make a decision. The primary goal of the exercise is to rescue a disabled civilian vessel... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 9


Two-photon lithography Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has extended the capabilities of a high-resolution 3D printing technique called two-photon lithography (TPL). TPL enables the development of 3D-printed objects. LLNL’s technology could enable 3D-printed embedded structures inside the body, such as stents, joint replacements or bone scaffolds. It could also one day be ... » read more

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