Power/Performance Bits: May 11


Light-emitting silicon Researchers from the Eindhoven University of Technology, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Johannes Kepler University, and Technische Universität München developed a silicon germanium alloy that can emit light, paving the way for a silicon laser that could be integrated for on-chip and chip-to-chip communication. Bulk silicon is extremely inefficient at emitting... » read more

Making Sense Of PUFs


As security becomes a principal design consideration, physically unclonable functions (PUFs) are seeing renewed interest as new players emerge onto the market. PUFs can play a central role in hardware roots of trust (HRoTs), but the messaging in the market can make it confusing to understand the different types of PUF as well as their pros and cons. PUFs leverage some uncertain aspect of som... » read more

System Bits: May 9


Graphene adopts exotic electronic states In a platform that may be used to explore avenues for quantum computing, MIT researchers have found that a flake of graphene, when brought in close proximity with two superconducting materials, can inherit some of those materials’ superconducting qualities. They reminded that in normal conductive materials such as silver and copper, electric curren... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 2


A graphene layer reads optical information from nanodiamonds electronically It is assumed that nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds could be used to construct vital components for quantum computers but reading optically-written information electronically from them has not been possible. Now, by using a graphene layer, a team of scientists headed by the Technische Universität München (TUM) ha... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 10


Lasers From Nano Wires A few weeks ago, Semiconductor Engineering published a special report about silicon photonics and concentrated on the integration of the laser onto the silicon surface. Growing III-V materials on silicon is problematic because of the lattice mismatch, but researchers at the Technische Universität München (TUM) may have found a way around that problem. Thread-like semic... » read more