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Jan 2, 2025 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
In September, Canon shipped the first commercial version of a technology that could one day upend the making of the most advanced silicon chips. Called nanoimprint lithography (NIL), it’s capable of patterning circuit features as small as 14 nanometers—enabling logic chips on par with Intel, AMD, and Nvidia processors now in mass production.
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Dec 21, 2024 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
When Chinese researchers’ announced in May last year they had used a quantum computer to crack RSA encryption, a widely used method to secure private data transmission, it caused a stir in the information security community. But after looking into the details presented, Western researchers suggested the claims were exaggerated and that there was no reason to panic.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
thescxchange.com | John Boyd |Dan Gilmore |Victoria Fraza Kickham
Five material handling companies have merged into a single entity, forming an Elgin, Illinois-based company called “Systems in Motion” that will function as a tier-one, turnkey material handling integrator, the members said. The initiative is the culmination of the companies’ close working relationship for the past five years and represents their unified strength.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
Researchers in Australia and Japan have developed a signal mixer that enhances the capacity of terahertz communications. The mixer, called a polarization multiplexer, merges two polarized signals of the same frequency into a single beam and operates at frequencies being explored for future 6G networks. The all-silicon integrated device uses novel features that deal with some of the challenges of communicating in the terahertz (THz) spectrum, such as limited power and transmission range.
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Aug 1, 2024 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
With some 5,000 satellites already orbiting the Earth, and a possible 100,000 expected to be launched by the end of the decade, it’s getting awfully crowded in low-earth orbit. And given the limited radio and microwave frequency spectrum (ranging from 1 to 40 gigahertz) available for satellite communications, satellite-to-Earth connections are facing an ever-narrowing data bottleneck. Which, in part, is why astronomers have stepped forward with an alternative.
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Jul 3, 2024 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
A day after the United States Senate passed legislation on 18 June to develop advanced nuclear technologies, in Australia, opposition leader promised, if elected, to build seven nuclear plants along the coasts of the island continent. The U.S. legislation passed with a vote of 82-2, but Dutton’s proposal brought forth fierce dispute from both federal and state governments, as well as energy experts and supporters of green energy.
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Jun 10, 2024 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
Daytime astronomy—amateur nighttime stargazers might wonder, what’s the point? But astronomers at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, have developed a new technique that makes possible daylight observation of structures in the Milky Way galaxy, potentially doubling available observation time and increasing our knowledge of the cosmos.
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Jun 10, 2024 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
As Intel, Samsung, TSMC, and Japan’s upcoming advanced foundry Rapiduseach make their separate preparations to cram more and more transistors into every square millimeter of silicon, one thing they all have in common is that the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology underpinning their efforts is extremely complex, extremely expensive, and extremely costly to operate.
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Mar 23, 2024 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
As demand for renewable energy soars, materials researchers are seeking ways to create more efficient solar cells. Standard crystalline solar photovoltaic (PV) cells produced commercially today typically can boast an 18 to 22 percent efficiency range. However, some researchers have turned their attention to more efficient silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells—the efficiency of which has reached 26.8 percent in the lab. SHJ’s numbers could be boosted further, too.
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Feb 4, 2024 | 
spectrum.ieee.org | John Boyd
Tropical climates could make racks of hot-running data servers even hotter. But researchers in Singapore are now testing ways to cool this trend, sustainably. The National University of Singapore in Queenstown (NUS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTUS), together with Singapore’s National Research Foundation and Infocomm Media Development Authority, as well as 20 IT companies, have collaborated to establish the industry’s first data center testbed for tropical climates.
