Items tagged with Microchip
There’s a little mess of wires and solder that started it all--the world’s first microchip for which its creator, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, eventually won the Nobel Prize in physics. And although at auction, the thing stirred up bids as high as $850,000, it failed to reach the reserve bid nor hit the $1 million to $2 million range expected by auction house Christie’s. A second, more stable prototype was also in the lot along with a letter from Kilby about the process of making them. Credit: Christie's via NBC News No matter; we care a lot less about the price than the fact that this crucial bit of computing history exists. Like many readers, the magnificent world of computing...
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If you thought microchips were only good for powering your desktop, netbook and cellphone (and maybe that tracking thing within your pup), you should think again. America's most popular sport (that's football, of course) is considering using microchips to better officiate games, make better calls and avoid mistakes that could prove costly if made at the wrong time. The NFL has been using Instant Reply for some time now in order to really evaluate close calls on the field, but even those aren't perfect. Camera angles can be blocked by players, and things can happen so quickly that even when slowed down, it's hard for the human eye to tell what a call should be. But if a microchip were inside of...
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Didn't you hate when your college calculus processor insisted that an answer had to be "exact," and that "close enough" just wouldn't cut it? Clearly, you should have attended Rice University or Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. A team of researchers from both institutions have come together in order to create a revolutionary type of computing that thrives on random errors. You read correctly: this stuff actually benefits from impreciseness.Dubbed PCMOS (for probabilistic CMOS), this technology has been used in a microchip that requires 30 times less electricity while running seven times faster than today's best technology. The crew unveiled their findings at the International Solid-State...
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