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

System Bits: June 14


Microlaser phase locking arrays for terahertz security scanners Researchers at MIT and Sandia National Laboratories reminded that terahertz radiation, the band of electromagnetic radiation between microwaves and visible light, has promising applications in security and medical diagnostics, even if such devices will require the development of compact, low-power, high-quality terahertz lasers. ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 7


Tiny lasers on silicon A group of scientists from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of California, Santa Barbara, Sandia National Laboratories, and Harvard University were able to fabricate tiny lasers directly on silicon. To do this, they first had to resolve silicon crystal lattice defects to a point where the cavities were essentially equivalent to those gr... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 24


Reducing MRAM chip area Researchers from Tohoku University developed a technology to stack magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ) directly on the via without causing deterioration to its electric/magnetic characteristics. The team focused on reducing the memory cell area of spin-transfer torque magnetic random access memory (STT-MRAM) in order to lower manufacturing costs, making them more compe... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 17


Nanotubes boost terahertz detectors Researchers at Rice University, Sandia National Laboratories and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed novel terahertz detectors based on carbon nanotubes that could improve medical imaging, airport passenger screening, food inspection and other applications. Unlike current terahertz detectors, the devices are flexible, sensitive to polarizatio... » read more

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