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New Intel chips to boost laptop battery by 50 percent | DVICEToday's laptops are held back, not by processing power, but by battery life. Even the best laptops can't go more than an average of five hours with multiple intensive applications running. Intel's fourth-generation "Haswell" chips are going to change that.
Intel's new 22-nanometer microarchitecture will reportedly boost laptop battery life by 50 percent, over computers running Ivy Bridge-based chips. It's not quite as impressive as previously reported, but we'll take it. Laptops with Haswell chips will use a feature called "power gating" to intelligently turn off features that suck battery life when the device is not in use.
Twin-beam signals send data 4x faster than conventional speeds - SlashGearMany researchers over the years have worked towards increasing data speeds, something that has had breakthroughs in various ways over the years. The latest one involves a method the creators say is a simple concept, but one that – for whatever reason – was never done. By creating mirrored beams of light that cancel out noise, the researchers sent a 400GB/s signal down nearly 8,000 miles of fiber optic cables.
According to the researchers, fast data transfers over long distances is best achieved using two beams of light rather than a single one ran down a fiber optic cable. These twin beams, as they’re called, are mirrored images of each other, something that has the added benefit of cancelling out the noise resulting from traveling down the cable. As such, data can be send across long distances.
The merging of the signals is done at the end of the cable, with the noise-cancelling effect being the result of something call phase conjugation. When light beams are sent down the fiber optic, they produce a pattern full of essentially “ups” and “downs” referred to as peaks and troughs. The way phase conjugation works is by forming an inverse of one light beam so that a peak becomes a trough and vice versa. As a result, the noise effects are cancelled out
Intel’s new Haswell chips couldn’t come at a better time for the PC industry. According to IDC, PC sales suffered the worst drop on record during the first quarter, due to both increasing tablet demand and a lukewarm reception for Windows 8. For its fourth-generation Core series processors (Haswell is the code name), Intel is promising a significant improvement in battery life and much better graphics performance.
The goal of Haswell? Push Ultrabooks further into the mainstream and make 2-in-1 systems (think detachable tablets and other hybrids) more compelling for consumers. Here’s what Haswell has in store.
Improved Battery Life
Intel power savings
The biggest, and perhaps most impressive, improvement Intel’s latest Core series chips offer is a more than 20 percent increase in battery life over the company’s previous generation CPUs. Intel managed this by reducing the total wattage the CPU requires to run various applications.
Whereas watching HD Video used to require more than 8W of power, Intel’s fourth-generation chips now need a little more than 5W. Similarly, Office applications, which used to require 8W of power, now need just under 6W.
Overall, the changes should result in some serious power efficiency improvements, with Intel estimating an additional 3 hours of HD video playback and anywhere from 10 to 13 days worth of standby power.
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Sharp Corp. (6753) said Thursday that it plans to use its energy-efficient IGZO display panels in all the smartphones, tablets and other devices it ships in fiscal 2014.
The screens were featured in just over 40% of its devices in the second half of fiscal 2012, but those equipped with the screens offered by the three big domestic telecommunications firms have been selling well.
Li-Fi, short for Light Fidelity, is a wireless data transfer technology first made popular by Harald Haas in his 2011 TED Talk. Now a Parisian company by the name of Oledcomm has announced that they'll have Li-Fi devices on the market sometime next year.
Li-Fi technology works by rapidly turning on and off a light source, creating binary code. The flashing of the light actually happens much faster than the human eye can detect, allowing for a Li-Fi data connection to resemble a simple LED bulb.
Sensors attached to computers or other smart devices collect the data as long as they're in the light's path. This leads to very specific areas in which Li-Fi can be used, ultimately meaning a more secure data connection — since someone would have to be sitting on your lap to steal it. This also means that, as opposed to Wi-Fi, Li-Fi is safe for locations that require low radiation — like doctor's offices or airplanes.
Li-Fi speeds are also way faster than traditional Wi-Fi. Oledcomm claims to have already achieved a 3 Gbps connection speed. Haas has also made the case for a whopping 10 Gbps connection in the near future. So, if screaming-fast download speeds coming out of your desk lamp sound good to you, keep your eyes peeled for those Li-Fi devices possibly hitting shelves next year. And while you're at it, check out one of Oledcomm's Li-Fi radios in action in the video below.
University of Washington computer scientists have developed gesture-recognition technology called “WiSee” that uses ambient Wi-Fi signals to detect specific movements (to turn off lights or flip through songs, for example )without needing sensors on the human body or cameras.
By using an adapted Wi-Fi router and a few wireless devices in the living room, users could control their electronics and household appliances from any room in the home with a simple gesture.
The concept is similar to Kinect — which uses cameras to recognize gestures — but the UW technology is simpler, cheaper, and doesn’t require users to be in line of sight, or even in same room as the device they want to control. That’s because Wi-Fi signals can travel through walls and aren’t bound by line-of-sight or sound restrictions.
The system requires one receiver with multiple antennas. Each antenna tunes into a specific user’s movements, so as many as five people can move simultaneously in the same residence without confusing the receiver. To use the WiSee, you would perform a specific repetition gesture sequence to get access to the receiver.
WiSee doesn’t require the user to be in the same room as the receiver or the device.
Many of us avoid flying with checked baggage when possible, and for good reason: even a simple delay can sour a whole trip. Airbus' new Bag2Go prototype could save us from having to pack light, however. The smart luggage carries a raft of sensors that work with an iOS app to bypass the usual airport drudgery. Its RFID chip lets travelers check in their bag and link it to every step of their itinerary; in theory, couriers can ship baggage to the hotel at a lower cost than usual. Bag2Go should also provide some reassurance through GPS tracking and alerts to any possible tampering. Airbus is still early into development, but it foresees a business model where customers can either buy a Bag2Go suitcase at a premium or rent one for a long vacation. As for us? We'll just be happy if our luggage avoids an unexpected detour to Belize.
World's fastest thumb drive lets you transfer files in a flash | DVICEMost of us don't worry too much about the few seconds it takes to transfer a bunch of files between a flash memory stick and a computer, but if those extra seconds could lead to problems, Intel has a solution for you.
Instead of the more common USB port, the new Thunderbolt thumb drive takes advantage of the extra speed available from your computer's Thunderbolt port. At 10 gigabits per second, this port has about twice the throughput of even the latest USB 3.0 ports, allowing you to transfer your stuff in half the time. The drive will also be able to keep up when the 20 Gbit/s Thunderbolt 2 arrives later this year.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...loak-that-can-erase-digital-data-from-historyWhat if you could harness the fundamental nature of the universe to make your data completely secure? It might be possible sooner than you think. Researchers have managed to create a so-called temporal cloak that acts as a pocket in time through which data can pass and leave no trace. The temporal cloak is so complete, the event is entirely obliterated from history.
Recent years have been filled with announcements of rudimentary invisibility cloak technology that relies on bending light around an object. The temporal cloak idea is built on the same principles, but in this case light waves are pulled apart then compressed to generate time pockets that cloak events.
Soft contact lenses could display information to the wearer and provide continuous medical monitoring.
By Katherine Bourzac on June 7, 2013
For those who find Google Glass indiscreet, electronic contact lenses that outfit the user’s cornea with a display may one day provide an alternative. Built by researchers at several institutions, including two research arms of Samsung, the lenses use new nanomaterials to solve some of the problems that have made contact-lens displays less than practical.
A group led by Jang-Ung Park, a chemical engineer at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, mounted a light-emitting diode on an off-the-shelf soft contact lens, using a material the researchers developed: a transparent, highly conductive, and stretchy mix of graphene and silver nanowires. The researchers tested these lenses in rabbits—whose eyes are similar in size to humans’—and found no ill effects after five hours. The animals didn’t rub their eyes or grow bloodshot, and the electronics kept working. This work is described online in the journal Nano
(Phys.org) —New technology under development at The Ohio State University is paving the way for low-cost electronic devices that work in direct contact with living tissue inside the body.
The first planned use of the technology is a sensor that will detect the very early stages of organ transplant rejection.
Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at Ohio State, explained that one barrier to the development of implantable sensors is that most existing electronics are based on silicon, and electrolytes in the body interfere with the electrical signals in silicon circuits. Other, more exotic semiconductors might work in the body, but they are more expensive and harder to manufacture.
Read more at: Tianhe-2 supercomputer at 31 petaflops is title contender(Phys.org) —How is this for bragging rights in the always-on title grab for the world's fastest supercomputer: China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer, aka Milkyway-2, recently measured at speeds of 31 petaflops (30.65) out of a theoretical peak of 49.19. The kicker is that it was not even running at full capacity. The fastest result was only using 90 percent of the machine. The stats come from a five-hour Linpack test using 14,336 nodes and 50 GB of memory of each node. (The Linpack benchmark is a measure of a computer's floating-point rate of execution. It is determined by running a computer program that solves a system of linear equations.) The numbers were revealed by University of Tennessee professor Jack Dongarra, who introduced the Linpack benchmarks, and who helps compile the biannual Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers.
It's starting to look like Leap Motion may have waited just a little too long to release its product, which was, incidentally, pushed back a few months again, from May to July 22. Just last week we told you about the WiSee Wi-Fi based gesture control hack, and now another company that has been working on gesture control for several years has unveiled a new development that instantly makes it more competitive with the Leap Motion.
Back in February, Israel-based eyeSight Mobile Technologies showed off the gesture control capabilities of its system that worked rather seamlessly as a 2D interface solution. The company has just posted a video that reveals an update to the software that includes the ability to simulate 3D tracking using the basic webcam already embedded in most laptops.
The demonstration video shows a user manipulating the 3D spatial controls of Google Earth with all the ease and smoothness that we've seen in similar videos showing off the Leap Motion. According to the company, the software allows any camera, in conjunction with the software, to control devices such as tablets, laptops, televisions, and even digital signage from up to 16 feet away.
You can see the new 3D gesture capabilities of the eyeSight system in action in the video below.
Apple doesn’t normally preview upcoming hardware, so when Tim Cook & Co. whipped out the new Mac Pro 2013 at WWDC 2013 this week you knew the company was particularly proud. Throwing away the old-style tower and completely rethinking not only the design, but the internal architecture, cooling, expansion, and ethos of a workstation, the Mac Pro 2013 will demand a new approach to computing from users, too, when it hits stores later this year. Read on as we break down what makes this Mac particularly special.
Design
Apple’s old Mac Pro has looked largely the same since 2006, a silver tower clad in perforated aluminum. The new Mac pro keeps the aluminum – now in a polished black finish – but otherwise changes everything, now a cylinder 9.9-inches tall and 6.6-inches in diameter. “It’s a pro desktop computer that can actually sit on your desk,” Apple says.
(Phys.org) —Using exotic components such as color codes, new phases of quantum matter, and extra dimensions, a team of physicists has shown that it's theoretically possible to construct a quantum computer that has the ability to correct
Mind-controlled cursor may be easier than previously thought | Cutting Edge - CNET NewsUniversity of Washington researchers discover that, when learning to control a cursor with thoughts alone, the brain behaves within mere minutes as if it is performing basic motor skills.
When scientists at the University of Washington recently drilled into the skulls of seven people with severe epilepsy and placed thin sheets of electrodes directly onto their brains, they were surprised by the brain activity they observed.
While physicians were studying neuro activity to investigate seizure signals, a separate team of bioengineers was simultaneously on the lookout for exactly how the brains of the seven volunteers behaved as they learned to move a cursor using their thoughts alone. It turns out that, in as few as 10 minutes, activity went from being centered on the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with learning new skills, to areas seen during more automatic functions, such as waving one's hand or kicking a ball.
In findings that could help overcome a major technological hurdle in the road toward smaller and more powerful electronics, an international research team involving University of Michigan engineering researchers, has shown the unique ways in which heat dissipates at the tiniest scales.
Over the past five years, NAND flash has gone from an exceedingly expensive storage solution that only a handful of customers could afford to a mainstream product used by millions of high-speed storage devices. This shift has been great for consumers and materially impacted the performance of even older systems, but NAND flash has long-term scaling and reliability issues. Researchers across the world have continued searching for alternative storage mediums that can store data for longer periods of time and use less power to perform read/write
On May 24, we reported on a tip that Google plans to launch wireless Internet service in emerging markets that have little or no access to the Internet. While the leaked details were extensive, one bit stuck out among the rest: the use of balloons to transmit signals over long distances. At least that aspect of the rumor has turned out to be true, with Google announcing the method as Project Loon.
According to Google, two of every three individuals on Earth either do not have access to the Internet, or don’t have access to a connection that is both fast and within their financial means – in some areas, individuals are faced with prices equal to more than a month’s paycheck. This issue isn’t going to resolve itself without thinking outside of the box, according to the company, and that is where the balloons come in.
Google is announcing Saturday it has 30 balloons floating over New Zealand to provide free Internet access to disaster-stricken, rural or poor areas.
Google has a truly sky-high idea for connecting billions of people to the Internet — 12 miles in the air — through giant helium balloons circling the globe that are equipped to beam Wi-Fi signals below.
Google will announce Saturday it has 30 balloons floating over New Zealand to provide free Internet access to disaster-stricken, rural or poor areas. Eventually, as the balloons move across the stratosphere, consumers in participating countries along the 40th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere could tap into the service.
A global quantum network | KurzweilAIAtoms, coupled to a glass fiber – the basis of the worldwide communication network of the future? (credit: Vienna University of Technology)
By quantum-mechanically coupling laser-cooled atoms to glass fiber cables, Vienna University of Technology researchers have developed a way to store quantum information over a long enough period of time to allow for entangling atoms hundreds of kilometers apart via fiber cables.
This finding is a fundamental building block for a global fiber-based quantum communication network, the researchers suggest.
A global quantum network
June 14, 2013
A global quantum network | KurzweilAIAtoms, coupled to a glass fiber the basis of the worldwide communication network of the future? (credit: Vienna University of Technology)
By quantum-mechanically coupling laser-cooled atoms to glass fiber cables, Vienna University of Technology researchers have developed a way to store quantum information over a long enough period of time to allow for entangling atoms hundreds of kilometers apart via fiber cables.
This finding is a fundamental building block for a global fiber-based quantum communication network, the researchers suggest.
