Power/Performance Bits: March 1


Low power Wi-Fi Computer scientists and electrical engineers from the University of Washington came up with a way to generate Wi-Fi transmissions using 10,000 times less power than conventional methods and which consumes 1,000 times less power than existing energy-efficient wireless communication platforms such as Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee. The system, Passive Wi-Fi, uses backscatte... » read more

System Bits: Sept. 15


Cache-coherence innovation for thousand-core chips MIT researchers are getting ready to unveil what they say is the first fundamentally new approach to cache coherence in more than three decades. They reminded that in a modern, multicore chip, every processor core has its own small memory cache, where it stores frequently used data. The chip also has a larger, shared cache, which all the cores... » read more

Think IoT Designs Are Challenging? Try Embedded Systems In The Brain


There’s low power and then there’s low power. There are amazing applications and then there are amazing applications. Today the bleeding edge of low power design is not so much in IoT (although excellent work is being done in that space) but in medical, where the stakes are high and possible outcomes life-altering. Chet Moritz, associate professor with the University of Washington’s... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 5


Single material batteries Engineers at the University of Maryland created a battery made entirely out of a single material that, by incorporating the properties of both the electrodes and electrolyte, can both move electricity and store it. The reason the new battery is revolutionary is because it solves the problem of what happens at the interface between the electrolyte and the electrod... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 9


Harvesting power from air A centuries-old clock built for a king is the inspiration for a group of University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers who hope to harvest power from the air. The clock, powered by changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure, was invented in the early 17th century by a Dutch builder. Three centuries later, Swiss engineer Jean Leon Reutter b... » read more

System Bits: Sept. 2


Thinnest semiconductor A team of researchers from the University of Washington, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Warwick have demonstrated that two single-layer semiconductor materials can be connected in an atomically seamless fashion known as a heterojunction, which they expect could be the basis for next-generation flexible and transparent computing, better light-emitting d... » read more

Disruptive R&D


Leading university researchers presented their most promising technologies — describing developments ranging from sustainable metal cluster technology (that’s already spawned three notable startups) to resonance-based detection for more accurate MEMS devices — at the new Breakthrough Research Technologies session and the Silicon Innovation Forum at SEMICON West 2014. OSU metal cluster... » read more

What Comes Next?


The latest manufacturing, materials and production developments for emerging and adjacent markets will be featured at SEMICON West 2014 (www.semiconwest.org), to be held on July 8-10 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif. The co-location of emerging and adjacent market focused exhibitors and technical presentations within the framework of SEMICON West maximizes the synergies between sem... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 18


Is my iPad making me sick? If you’ve ever felt sick or queasy after using a mobile device for an extended period of time, researchers from the University of Minnesota, believe they know why. In a recent study, participants played video games on iPads - under controlled, experimental conditions - and experienced motion sickness almost a third of the time. The risk of motion sickness was fo... » read more

System Bits: Aug. 27


Material that conducts and insulates It is well known to scientists that the three common phases of water – ice, liquid and vapor – can exist stably together only at a particular temperature and pressure, called the triple point. Also well known is that the solid form of many materials can have numerous phases, but it is difficult to pinpoint the temperature and pressure for the points at ... » read more

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