Posts Tagged ‘COMPUTING’
Researchers Weave Wearable Memory Out of Copper
Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center have created a proof-of-concept design for a flexible memory fabric made of platinum and woven copper and copper-oxide wires that form a memory circuit. In tests, this e-textile system was able to store information for more than 100 days, and was completely reversible and rewriteable.
To really become something we'd want to put on in the morning, though, the fabric needs to add a power source, sensors and computing ability. While a full-fledged computing suit may still be far away, the advances in textile tech are mounting, and it's only a matter of time.
[PhysOrg]
Researchers Weave Wearable Memory Out of Copper
Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center have created a proof-of-concept design for a flexible memory fabric made of platinum and woven copper and copper-oxide wires that form a memory circuit. In tests, this e-textile system was able to store information for more than 100 days, and was completely reversible and rewriteable.
To really become something we'd want to put on in the morning, though, the fabric needs to add a power source, sensors and computing ability. While a full-fledged computing suit may still be far away, the advances in textile tech are mounting, and it's only a matter of time.
[PhysOrg]
IBM Mysteriously Halts Work on the World’s Fastest Academic Supercomputer
Usually we’d spend the second paragraph telling you why, but in this case we just don’t know. IBM said the supercomputer became more expensive and more complex than the company foresaw. A company spokeswoman said IBM is capable of meeting the technological goals outlined for the project, but nonetheless it is choosing not to.
That’s all a bit odd. The computer, known as Blue Waters, is a building-sized behemoth costing roughly half a billion dollars, much of which was funded by the National Science Foundation. It was based on IBM’s Power7 series chip that is not yet on the market. Which makes one wonder if there was a problem with the chip or with the architecture of the computer itself. Or maybe upon building the first few racks of hardware the computer started to think for itself (with few answers to work with, we’re taking license to speculate here).
But the world’s biggest, baddest academic computer isn’t necessarily lost. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (you may remember it from our coverage of U. of Illinois’ earlier this year), which is heading the effort, is seeking other means to finish the computer without IBM. But it only has a few weeks to get another plan in front of the NSF.
Unfortunately, this kind of hardware doesn’t exactly exist in plug-and-play format, so we’ll have to wait and see if some other chip developer can step in and make the NCSA’s new supercomputer as super as it was supposed to be.
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By Delivering Qubits Alongside Classical Data, Researchers Move Toward Bringing Us a Quantum Internet
The team, from the Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork in Ireland, has demonstrated in a new paper how qubits--the basic blocks of quantum computing--can travel over standard fiber optics networks. This has been shown before, but not in a real-world kind of way. In other words, you can move qubits over fiber optics in theory, sure. But to feasibly do so--especially alongside traditional data streams--is a huge step forward.
The problem has always been one of interference. Qubits are carried by single photons, while traditional data packets are carried by strong laser pulses. Those pulses flying throughout a network result in spontaneous Raman scattering of photons within the optical fiber, and that in turn interferes with the quantum channels, causing a rate of error that’s high enough to be prohibitive.
So the Cork team figured out how to squeeze the qubits in there in between the Raman scattering. When the pulses of laser light are moving through the optical fiber, the interference pulses along with it--that is, there are quiet moments in between bursts of Raman scattering that lead to interference or crosstalk on the network. By carefully controlling the timing and wavelength of the quantum data, the researchers showed that they could slip quantum data generated by a QKD scheme in between the noise areas, where they can travel untouched by the interference.
All that is key if we’re ever going to practically begin a shift over to widespread quantum computing (first we’ll need some good quantum computers of course, but it never hurts to be prepared). It would be really expensive to build a second quantum network alongside our existing classical data networks. Using this scheme, it appears you could get classical and quantum streams running alongside each another, making quantum IT more commercially viable.
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IBM Demos Phase Change Memory That Reliably Packs Multiple Data Bits Into Single Cells
Like flash, PCM is a non-volatile memory technology. But PCM has the potential to blow flash performance out of the water. PCM could boost overall performance of backbone IT systems by orders of magnitude. Computers could boot instantaneously. The cloud could grow at rates that might actually keep up with all the stuff we’re shoveling into the cloud.
But phase change memory isn’t the simplest nut to crack (for fuller explanations of how it works, click through the link below. Or try ). Simply put, PCM takes advantage of the change in resistance that takes place when a material changes phases, in this case from a crystalline structure to an amorphous one. Crystalline structures exhibit high resistance and amorphous low resistance.
This range of resistance allows computer scientists to store more than one bit per memory cell, hence the huge jump in memory and performance. So in the IBM research to which we refer, scientists were able to store the bit combos “00,” “01,” “10,” and “11” in four distinct resistance levels of a single bit. It’s like a four-for-one deal.
The problem with PCM is that the resistance in the amorphous state tends to drift, rising over time and leading to read errors. That’s the real problem that was solved here: IBM’s novel read/write processes, rather than restricting resistance drift, are now coding in a drift-tolerant way. If the resistance shifts, it’s no big deal; the PCM’s long-term retention of usable, retrievable data is still solid.
This demo has been going on successfully for five months, long enough that IBM feels confident that it has a solution that really can hold data in PCM for extended periods. Of course research is ongoing, but if it proves as reliable as this first demo suggests, PCM could potentially become as ubiquitous as flash is today, doing a whole lot more with a lot less space.
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IBM Data Analysis Platform to Plan a More Efficient Future, Coming to a City Near You
The Intelligent Operations Center is designed to aggregate data from multiple government IT systems, which could help city planners spot trends and connections among various types of data. As we reported previously, IBM began rolling out the porject in Rio de Janeiro, where algorithms are helping and coordinate emergency responses. IBM has also been working with smaller locales like Dubuque, Iowa, to study anything from public safety to water use.
The platform could integrate public transportation information with traffic management, for instance, letting cities plan better bus routes or traffic signal patterns based on congestion at various times of day. Or it could monitor maintenance logs on city infrastructure, deploying utility crews to fix water pipes or other assets before they break. It could even help planners devise better emergency responses, analyzing cameras and crime databases to catch criminals or even prevent crime, IBM says.
It will all be cloud-based, so cities won’t have to hire teams of on-the-ground IT consultants to sift through competing types of data. This will be cheaper for cities, but also easier for IBM, which can easily customize code for any municipality.
The plug-and-play system will have several modules based on various themes, like public safety or water management. None of the modules are available yet, but IBM will roll them out over the next year, explains. IBM engineers noticed several common threads in its previous Smarter Cities projects, like how to deal with congestion, and decided to turn them into code.
IBM plans to offer the software starting June 17. Cities will be able to contract with Big Blue itself or various vendors, the company says. No word yet on price, but IBM says the system's ability to spot inefficiencies will save cities money in the long run. For instance, Alameda County, Calif., used a software system to coordinate its social services, which saved $25 million a year, IBM tells PC World.
This could be a promising proposition for cash-strapped municipalities still reeling from the recession. And that sounds pretty smart.
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Largest DNA-Based Computer Ever Built Can Calculate Square Roots
Researchers at Caltech engineered the most complex biochemical circuit ever created from scratch, according to a new paper published today. The circuit uses DNA instead of electronic transistors to produce the on-off, and-or signals that allow a computer to conduct its calculations.
In a typical computer, transistors let a current of electrons flow in and out. The DNA computer instead uses pieces of short, single-stranded DNA or partially double-stranded DNA placed in a test tube of salt water. The strands stick out like tentacles from the DNA’s double helix, as a news release from Caltech . The DNA molecules collide in the water and bind together, producing and releasing offspring molecules. These act as the signals, like electrons in a traditional chip, and they travel among the DNA “gates,” connecting the circuit.
Pairs of gates can create and-or logic based on the output molecules observed, as Ars Technica explains it. (Check out for a more thorough explanation of how this works.)
The researchers, led by postdoctoral researcher Lulu Qian, can encode whatever DNA sequence they want, so they have full control over how the DNA strands interact.
Their largest computer was a 74-molecule, four-bit circuit that could compute the square root of any number up to 15, rounding down the answer to the nearest whole number. To get the answer, the researchers would monitor the concentration of output molecules in the test tube, using fluorescent tagging.
The process takes a long time, but speed is not the point — using this method, scientists could eventually engineer biochemical pathways that are capable of making decisions. This type of control over chemical reactions could be useful for anything from pharmaceuticals to industrial processes. Imagine DNA-based computer chips embedded in your skin, releasing drugs when the time is right, or a DNA computer that can study the concentration of certain molecules in a blood sample and quickly diagnose a disease.
The circuit can be scaled up to larger DNA computers, the researchers say. They can also be customized by adjusting the types of DNA used or reconfiguring the circuit.
“We want to make better and better biochemical circuits that can do more sophisticated tasks, driving molecular devices to act on their environment,” Qian said in a news release. The computer was described in a paper in today's issue of the journal Science.
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