System Bits: April 16


Characterizing 2D borophene Researchers at Rice and Northwestern universities collaborated on a method to view the polymorphs of 2D borophene crystals, providing insights into the lattice configurations of the two-dimensional material. Boris Yakobson, a materials physicist at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, and materials scientist Mark Hersam of Northwestern led a team that not only d... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: April 8


Designing metamaterials Sandia National Laboratories has developed an inverse-design software technology that automates the design of optical metamaterials. Metamaterials are artificial materials containing arrays of metal nanostructures or mega-atoms. Some metamaterials are able to bend light around objects, rendering them invisible. But they only interact with light over a very narrow ran... » read more

Chips In Space


Geoff Tate, CEO of Flex Logix, talks about why embedded FPGAs are being tapped for accelerators in satellites and airplanes, why programmability is so critical to deal with changes in technology that can span decades from initial design. https://youtu.be/ynZYKXcLCzE » read more

Sandia Labs’ New Configurable SoC


At DAC 2018, held in June in San Francisco, Sandia Labs made a public presentation for the first time describing its first SoC using eFPGA, called Dragonfly. This is the first public disclosure by any organization describing its requirements, architecture and use cases for the new technology option of embedded FPGA. John Teifel led the project for Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia has ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: July 16


Bacterial solar Researchers at the University of British Columbia developed a solar cell that uses bacteria to convert light to energy. The cell worked as efficiently in dim light as in bright light, making solar a potential option in areas of the world that frequently have overcast skies. Called biogenic cells, they work by utilizing the natural dye that bacteria use for photosynthesis. Pr... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 31


Battery material supplies Researchers at MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Rochester Institute of Technology conducted an analysis of whether there are enough raw materials to support increased lithium-ion battery production, expected to grow significantly due to electric vehicles and grid-connected battery systems. They conclude that while in the near future there shou... » read more

The LiDAR Gold Rush


Big money is pouring into the LiDAR market, as carmakers gear up for autonomous and assisted driving. LiDAR, along with advanced computer vision and radar sensors, is an essential component for vehicles to maneuver without hitting obstacles or other cars. LiDAR is an acronym for light imaging, detection, and ranging, and until now it has been almost synonymous with next-generation automotive... » read more

System Bits: May 30


Diamonds for quantum computing Quantum computers are experimental devices that offer large speedups on some computational problems, and one promising approach to building them involves harnessing nanometer-scale atomic defects in diamond materials. At the same time, practical, diamond-based quantum computing devices will require the ability to position those defects at precise locations in com... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: April 11


Neuromorphic cyber microscope Sandia National Laboratories and Lewis Rhodes Labs have introduced a new cybersecurity tool called the Neuromorphic Cyber Microscope. The system is not a traditional microscope per se. It is a PCIe-based processing card build around Lewis Rhodes Labs’ neuromorphic processor. The system can accelerate complex pattern matching by over 100x while using 1,000x le... » read more

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

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