Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 19


Flexible energy harvesting rectenna Researchers from MIT, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University Carlos III of Madrid, Boston University, University of Southern California, and the Army Research Laboratory created a flexible rectenna capable of converting energy from Wi-Fi signals into electricity to power small devices and sensors. The device uses a flexible RF antenna to capture e... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 11


Modeling computer vision on human vision University of Michigan scientists used digital foveation technology to render images that are more comprehensible to machine vision systems, while also reducing energy consumption by 80%. The effect is achieved by manipulating a camera’s firmware. “It'll make new things and things that were infeasible before, practical,” Professor Robert Dick s... » read more

December ’18 Startup Funding: Big Rounds As 2018 Ends


During the month of December, 16 startups had private funding rounds of $100 million and up, with half of them in the mobility area. Those 16 rounds totaled $3.2 billion as the year concluded. Before the holidays, the SoftBank Vision Fund invested $500 million in Cambridge Mobile Telematics, provider of the DriveWell platform used by insurers, vehicle fleets, wireless carriers, and others to... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 2


High-temp electronics Researchers at Purdue University, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford developed a semiconducting plastic capable of operating at extreme temperatures. The new material, which combines both a semiconducting organic polymer and a conventional insulating organic polymer could reliably conduct electricity in up to 220 degrees Celsius (428 F). "One of the plastics transports the ch... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 18


Solar storage Engineers at MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory designed a system to store renewable energy in vast amounts and deliver it back to the grid when power generation is low. The system stores excess electricity from solar or wind installations as heat using tanks of white-hot molten silicon, and then converts the light from the glowi... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 4


Bio-hybrid fungi Researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology combined a white button mushroom, electricity-producing cyanobacteria, and graphene nanoribbons into a power-generating symbiotic system. "In this case, our system - this bionic mushroom - produces electricity," said Manu Mannoor, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens. "By integrating cyanobacteria that ca... » read more

System Bits: Nov. 27


Silent, lightweight aircraft powered by ionic wind Instead of propellers or turbines, MIT researchers have built and flown the first-ever aircraft with no moving parts that is powered by an “ionic wind” — a silent but mighty flow of ions that is produced aboard the plane, and that generates enough thrust to propel the plane over a sustained, steady flight. [caption id="attachment_2414... » read more

System Bits: Nov. 20


Designing transistors that don’t overheat In order to avoid heat-induced voids and cracking that can cause chips and circuits to fail, Stanford University and University of California at Davis researchers have developed a way to not only manage heat, but help route it away from delicate devices that leverages a thermal transistor, which is a nanoscale switch that can conduct heat away from ... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Gartner identified what it says are the top 10 strategic Internet of Things technologies and trends. Number one, no surprise, is artificial intelligence. Nick Jones, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement, “AI will be applied to a wide range of IoT information, including video, still images, speech, network traffic activity, and sensor data.” Other top t... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 7


Arm's Shidhartha Das looks into maximizing the benefits of power delivery networks and explains a non-intrusive technique using an on-chip digital storage oscilloscope that can directly sample the power-rails to probe potential runtime bugs due to power delivery weaknesses. Synopsys' Snigdha Dua argues that scrambling is one of the most important features introduced in HDMI 2.0 and takes a l... » read more

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