Items tagged with Silicon
Remember when a 1TB hard drive seemed enormous? There was also a time when the idea of having even 8GB of memory in our personal computers seemed like extreme overkill. Today, that's basically the starting point for most PCs. As time goes on, and tech improves, even today's storage types and sizes are bound to seem hilariously lacking. For storage and memory companies, the challenge is to shrink dies ever smaller, or increase the amount of data that can be crammed into mechanical storage. Both methods need to continue progressing at a smooth enough rate so as to not bottleneck the other. Just as mechanical storage used to be the biggest bottleneck in our desktops, today's solutions are proving...
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Three atoms thick. According to a paper published this week in the science journal Nature by a group of researchers from Cornell University, that is the breadth of the transistors that can now be produced using an experimental — and highly conductive — material called transition metal dichalcogenide (also called a TMD). We aren't talking five atoms thick, or even four (because any schmoe with a hobbyist chemistry set can do that), but transistors rendered at a thickness of just three atoms. As it applies to theoretical science and human achievement, the harnessing of TMD for practical use is quite remarkable. It is the prospective leaps that could potentially be made in technological hardware...
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The trickle-down effect has applied to technology for some time, but this feels more rapid than usual. Just a few years after LTE was introduced, and reserved only for flagship phones, Qualcomm has introduced a new SoC that could bring LTE access to millions of new users. The new Snapdragon 200 tier (namely the Snapdragon 210), will offer integrated multimode 3G/4G LTE and LTE Dual SIM for entry-level smartphones. QTI also today unveiled the company’s first LTE-equipped tablet reference design, enabling OEMs and ODMs to create and introduce a new class of multimode 3G/4G LTE connected tablets. Initial versions of the tablet reference design will be available with the Snapdragon 410 and...
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The television may not be what it once was for a mainstay like Toshiba, but the company's still investing in other growth areas. Just this week, it announced plans to plow 200 billion yen (around $1.9 billion) into its chip business beyond the current year. The outfit's CEO, Hisao Tanaka, confessed as much during an opening ceremony surrounding its chip fabrication plant in Yokkaichi, Japan. In case the financial sum wasn't a clue, Tanaka said that "boosting sales and profits" in the company's semiconductor unit was being made an even greater priority than becoming the world's leader in NAND flash memory (for reference, Samsung currently holds the crown there). Toshiba's Fab No. 5 plant was built...
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If you needed concrete proof that we should all be amazed at just how quickly things change in the technology world, look no further. In 2009, Intel proudly boasted that it would spend around $7 billion to build a massive fabrication facility in Arizona. In the years since, the PC market has essentially been told that it's dying (and soon), and chip makers such as Intel face little choice but to either revert to the mobile bandwagon or create some sort of additional revenue driver given that laptop and desktop sales are going to slowly decline for the foreseeable future. The "Fab 42" facility, which was constructed in Chandler, Arizona, is now going to "remain closed while other factories at...
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You have to wonder: how many companies have to do the same thing before it officially becomes a trend? With Samsung, Apple and select mega-corporations all mulling the idea (or moving forward with plans) to construct their own silicon, it shouldn't come as a major surprise to hear that Lenovo is considering the same. Of course, Lenovo makes far fewer smartphones and tablets compared to the likes of Samsung and Apple, but it ships a vast, vast quantity of business laptops that it has to lean heavily on Intel for. A report from EETimes suggests that Lenovo will "get into the chip design business with a special focus on smartphones and tablets," but much like the company's existing plans, this isn't...
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You know, it's not often we get to bestow upon you words of pure wisdom. Sure, we provide detailed, timely news, product and technology analysis but really, we're not in the business of covering your backside. That's what Moms are for or your personal Wingman or Wingwoman, as the case may be. That said, we'll give you a bit of advice for this fine Friday... If you see a dude dressed up like this and looking seriously pleased about it, coming your way, we'd suggest you run (don't walk) the other way. Let's see if your instincts are in proper attenuation tonight. Can you tell us, who is the MAN in the middle of this fab tour shot?They're like Gangstas but geekier......
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Intel's Silicon Photonics Advancement Aims to Accelerate Future Computing, Communications SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 7, 2008 - Intel researchers have made the next advance in the field of Silicon Photonics by achieving world-record performance using a silicon-based Avalanche Photodetector (APD) that could lower costs and improve performance as compared to commercially available optical devices. The research results were published today in Nature Photonics.Silicon Photonics is an emerging technology using standard silicon to send and receive optical information among computers and other electronic devices. The technology aims to address future bandwidth needs of data-intensive computing applications...
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Companies have been trying to find a way around Moore's Law for quite some time now, and a large part of that search involves new materials. One such material is called Graphene, and can be made into flexible sheets only a single atom thin."Graphene is mechanical tough, flexible, transparent, and a great conductor of heat. The new research shows that it would make an ideal double both in transistors and in interconnects, replacing silicon and copper to form ultra-high frequency circuits. Further, it could be ideally applied to vast amount of applications including photovoltaics, lcd panels, and sensors, all of which rely on optimal conductivity/electrical behavior."Currently...
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Seattle has been a boomtown a half-a-dozen times over the years. Looks like it is again. The entrepreneurs of the digital age seemed to have settled on the Seattle area as the next big thing - the overcast version of Silicon Valley. “The Seattle start-up ecosystem is vibrant, and growing rapidly,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Washington and a serial technology entrepreneur.The University of Washington, in fact, is one of the big draws. It is fostering the entrepreneurial climate here the way Stanford University does in Silicon Valley. Another advantage is the tech-savvy talent at the Seattle-based Amazon and nearby Microsoft.Microsoft offshoots,...
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Is sixty years a long time? I guess, but it's not ancient history. On December 16, 1947 at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, the world's first transistor was born. Ever since the people at Bell got over wondering just what they needed those little semiconductor amplifiers for, when they had perfectly good vacuum tubes hanging around to do that sort of work, it's been all Moore's Law all the way, baby. Between 1958 and 1959 two men working independently, Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments (nyse: TXN - news - people ) and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor (nyse: FCS - news - people ), figured out how to combine a sequence of transistors on a single wafer of silicon crystal. Now true...
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Well, I assume they do. They seem to know more about it than anybody. In a breakthrough paper delivered in the Optics Express journal, IBM has demonstrated their method for greatly improving the transfer of information between multiple computer chip cores, substituting optical signals sent through silicon for electrical pulses sent through copper wire. By greatly shrinking the size of the optical router, or modulator, IBM claims they'll be able to shrink a supercomputer-grade machine down to laptop size. A major challenge for scientists is finding a way to improve communication between [multiple] cores without increasing power consumption.The most promising solution is...
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Why would Silicon Valley, which birthed the idea of the cubicle, be moving away from it? Even Intel, which is often credited with the idea, is rethinking it.Cubicles can prompt odd behavior, people who have studied them said. It is hard to see if colleagues are busy, so some cube-dwellers will send emails to a neighbor about a simple question that could have been answered more easily in a conversation. Some technology companies never adopted cubes. Microsoft Corp., for example, promotes quiet and concentration by giving most workers offices with doors. That is costly. Chris Hood, a manager in what H-P calls its Workplace program, said contact and collaboration boost productivity for many...
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I know that it's crazyI know that it's nowhereBut there is no denying thatIt's hip to be square(Huey Lewis & the News)Admit it: Silicon Valley is the land of the Geek. For startups, this generally translates to things like video games, foosball and table tennis. Now the latest "stress reliever" in Silicon Valley is that old schoolyard game, four square. The latest oddball pursuit in Silicon Valley - the land of perpetual adolescence - is the classic playground game in which four players occupy squares and hit a rubber ball back and forth with their hands, trying to get each other out and score points.Four square is in a counterculture league of its own even in authority-bucking Silicon...
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