Power/Performance Bits: March 15


Magnetic computing Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrated that magnetic chips can operate with the lowest fundamental level of energy dissipation possible under the laws of thermodynamics. "We wanted to know how small we could shrink the amount of energy needed for computing," said Jeffrey Bokor, a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sci... » read more

Enabling Self-Driving Cars


To enable truly self-driving cars — the ones without a gearshift or a steering wheel — there must be a confluence of technologies, a refinement of the business models, regulatory and safety requirements, and insurance concerns. So how close is the automotive ecosystem to reaching the goal of truly autonomous driving? That depends on your vantage point. As far as where automakers are t... » read more

Masters Of Abstraction


Good system designers are a unique breed. While it's easy enough to distinguish the traits that define a good one from a weak one, it's much harder to determine who possesses those traits before they are put to the test, or whether or how they can be taught. However, there is definitely a particular perspective that good system designers hold in common. The key is the ability to work with ma... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 16


WW seismic network app UC Berkeley researchers have released a free Android app that uses a smartphone’s ability to record ground shaking from an earthquake, with the goal of creating a worldwide seismic detection network that could eventually warn users of impending jolts from nearby quakes. The app, called MyShake, is available from the Google Play Store and runs in the background with... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 2


Wearable sensors reveal health data from sweat In the name of science, UC Berkeley researchers want you to break out into a sweat — so it can be analyzed, of course. Specifically, the researchers have created a flexible sensor system that can measure metabolites and electrolytes in sweat, calibrate the data based upon skin temperature and sync the results in real time to a smartphone. The... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 26


Precisely controlling graphene molecules Researchers at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute have found that in the same way gardeners may use sheets of plastic with strategically placed holes to allow plants to grow but keep weeds from taking root, the same basic approach can be applied in terms of placing molecules in the specific patterns they need within tiny nanoelectronic devices, w... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 29


Optoelectronics built using existing manufacturing Using only processes found in existing microchip fabrication facilities, researchers at MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Colorado have produced a working optoelectronic microprocessor that computes electronically but uses light to move information. The researchers reminded that optical communications prom... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 15


Building chips skyscraper style With the aim of boosting electronic performance by factor of a thousand, a team of researchers led by Stanford University engineers have created a skyscraper-like chip design, based on materials more advanced than silicon. For many years, computer systems have been designed with processors and memory chips laid out like single-story structures in a suburb whe... » read more

MEMS: Flexible, Reusable Platforms Facilitate Innovation


As the game-changing enabler for whatever the emerging market of widespread fragmented intelligence turns out to look like, the MEMS sector is in some ways the bellwether for much of the greater semiconductor/components supply chain looking to rethink how to serve a wider range of fragmented applications with lower costs and faster time to market. Leaders from Cisco, InvenSense, Nasiri Ventures... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 1


Hiding wires from the sun There's a problem with most solar cells: the electricity-carrying metal wire grid on top prevents sunlight from reaching the semiconductor below. A team from Stanford University tackled this problem, discovering a way to hide the reflective upper contact and funnel light directly to the semiconductor below. For the study, the researchers placed a 16-nanometer-thi... » read more

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