Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 24


Printable circuits with silver nanowires Scientists at Duke University compared the conductivity of films made from different shapes of silver nanostructures and found that electrons move through films made of silver nanowires much easier than films made from other shapes, like nanospheres or microflakes. In fact, electrons flowed so easily through the nanowire films that they could function... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 30


Scalable data center chip Princeton University researchers designed a new scalable chip specifically for data centers and massive computing systems. The team believes the chip, called Piton, can substantially increase processing speed while slashing energy needs. The chip architecture is scalable; designs can be built that go from a dozen cores to several thousand. Also, the architecture ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 12


World’s smallest magnet The University of Tokyo has developed what researchers claim is the world's smallest nano-magnet. The nano-size ferrite magnet consists of iron oxide. With the material, researches devised a 7.5nm structure with magnetic properties. [caption id="attachment_24751" align="alignleft" width="300"] Charting the world's smallest magnet (Source: Shin-ichi Ohkoshi)[/ca... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 5


A foggy consortium Scientists at Princeton University, ARM, Cisco, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft formed a global effort to develop architectures and tools to further "fog computing" and networks, which aim to harness connected devices' own computing, sensing and storage power to form edge networks that meet most of the demand of user devices that are at the periphery of a more centralized netwo... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 1


Extracting the right information in large data sets When solving complex scientific problems, researchers sometimes encounter what is called the curse of dimensionality, that is, they have so much data that they cannot efficiently analyze it. Large data sets can also be expensive and time consuming to acquire, so it is critical to gather only what is necessary. To this end, University of Il... » read more

System Bits: July 28


Massless particles for faster electronics Princeton University researchers along with an international team have finally proved a massless particle that had been theorized for 85 years. They say this particle could give rise to faster and more efficient electronics because of its unusual ability to behave as matter and antimatter inside a crystal. [caption id="attachment_21431" align="align... » read more

System Bits: March 3


Observing antiferromagnetic order in ultracold atoms Rice University researchers have simulated superconducting materials and made headway on a problem that’s vexed physicists for nearly three decades using ultracold atoms as a stand-in for electrons. The research team, led by Rice, included researchers from Ohio State University, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, University of Cal... » read more

System Bits: Nov. 4


Turning loss to gain By reexamining longstanding beliefs about the physics of lasers, Princeton University engineers have shown that by carefully restricting the delivery of power to certain areas within a laser could boost its output by many orders of magnitude. The team believes this finding could enable more sensitive and energy-efficient lasers, as well as potentially more control over ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 30


A “perfect” solar absorber According to researchers at MIT, the key to creating a material that would be ideal for converting solar energy to heat is tuning the material’s spectrum of absorption just right: It should absorb virtually all wavelengths of light that reach Earth’s surface from the sun — but not much of the rest of the spectrum, since that would increase the energy that i... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 7


Harvesting electricity In order to produce small amounts of electricity for portable devices and sensors, Georgia Tech researchers are developing a family of power generators that take advantage of the triboelectric effect. The researchers are using what’s technically known as the triboelectric effect to create surprising amounts of electric power by rubbing or touching two different mate... » read more

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