Memory and more
The new fiber was created by placing hundreds of square silicon microscale digital chips into a preform that was then used to create a polymer fiber. By precisely controlling the polymer flow, the researchers were able to create a fiber with continuous electrical connection between the chips over a length of tens of meters.
On the northwest coast of Taiwan, nestled between mudflats teeming with fiddler crabs and sweet-scented persimmon orchards, sits the world’s most important company that you’ve probably never heard of. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of the semiconductor chips—otherwise known as integrated circuits, or just chips—that power our phones, laptops, cars, watches, refrigerators and more. Its clients include Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, AMD and Nvidia.
Inside its boxy off-white headquarters in sleepy Hsinchu County, technicians in brightly hued protective suits—white and blue for employees, green for contractors and pink for pregnant women—push polished metal carts under a sallow protective light. Above their heads, “claw machines”—nicknamed after the classic arcade game—haul 9-kg plastic containers containing 25 individual slices, or “wafers,” of silicon on rails among hundreds of manufacturing stations, where they are extracted one by one for processing, much like a jukebox selecting a record. Only after six to eight weeks of painstaking etching and testing can each wafer be carved up into individual chips to be dispatched around the planet.
“We always say that it’s like building a high-rise,” one TSMC section manager tells TIME, pointing to how his technicians diligently follow instructions dictated to them via tablet. “You can only build one story at a time.”
When Nicole Oliveira was just learning to walk, she would throw up her arms to reach for the stars in the sky.
Today, at just eight years of age, the Brazilian girl is known as the world’s youngest astronomer, looking for asteroids as part of a NASA-affiliated program, attending international seminars and meeting with her country’s top space and science figures.
In Oliveira’s room, filled with posters of the Solar System, miniature rockets and Star Wars figures, Nicolinha, as she is affectionately known, works on her computer studying images of the sky on two large screens.
Reversible system can flip the magnetic orientation of particles with a small voltage; could lead to faster data storage and smaller sensors.
Most of the magnets we encounter daily are made of “ferromagnetic” materials. The north-south magnetic axes of most atoms in these materials are lined up in the same direction, so their collective force is strong enough to produce significant attraction. These materials form the basis for most of the data storage devices in today’s high-tech world.
Less common are magnets based on ferrimagnetic materials, with an “i.” In these, some of the atoms are aligned in one direction, but others are aligned in precisely the opposite way. As a result, the overall magnetic field they produce depends on the balance between the two types — if there are more atoms pointed one way than the other, that difference produces a net magnetic field in that direction.
At the SAS 2021 security conference today, analysts from security firm Kaspersky Lab have published details about a new Chinese cyber-espionage group that has been targeting high-profile entities across South East Asia since at least July 2020.
Named GhostEmperor, Kaspersky said the group uses highly sophisticated tools and is often focused on gaining and keeping long-term access to its victims through the use of a powerful rootkit that can even work on the latest versions of Windows 10 operating systems.
“We observed that the underlying actor managed to remain under the radar for months,” Kaspersky researchers explained today.
As part of the launch of the new Loihi 2 chip, built on a pre-production version of Intel’s 4 process node, the Intel Labs team behind its Neuromorphic efforts reached out for a chance to speak to Mike Davies, the Director of the project. Now it is perhaps no shock that Intel’s neuromorphic effo…
We’ve been eagerly following the development of the WiFiWart for some time now, as a quad-core Cortex-A7 USB phone charger with dual WiFi interfaces that runs OpenWrt sounds exactly like the sort of thing we need in our lives. Unfortunately, we’ve just heard from [Walker] that progress on the project has been slowed down indefinitely by crippling chip shortages.
At this point, we’ve all heard how the chip shortage is impacting the big players out there. It makes sense that automakers are feeling the pressure, since they are buying literally millions of components at a clip. But stories like this are a reminder that even an individual’s hobby project can be sidelined by parts that are suddenly 40 times as expensive as they were when you first put them in your bill of materials.
In this particular case, [Walker] explains that a power management chip you could get on DigiKey for $1.20 USD a few months ago is now in such short supply that the best offer he’s found so far is $49.70 a pop from an electronics broker in Shenzhen. It sounds like he’s going to bite the bullet and buy the four of them (ouch) that he needs to build a working prototype, but obviously it’s a no go for production.
The wider Super Cruise rollout is on pause.
The 2022 Cadillac Escalade will no longer come with the company’s hands-free driving system, Super Cruise, because of the ongoing global chip shortage. Cadillac is suspending the feature on other new vehicles, too.
Re-Imagining Health and Wellbeing — Lisa Esch & Dr. Michael Petersen, M.D., NTT.
The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (https://hello.global.ntt/en-us/), commonly known as NTT, is a Japanese telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
NTT DATA Services (https://www.nttdata.com/global/en), is a global digital business and IT services leader focused on a range of business services, including cloud, data and applications, and which has recently embarked on an ambitious new initiative, as part of their goal “To Change The Future For Good”, towards Re-Imagining Health and Well-Being, towards what NTT defines as a more human-empowered, knowledge-driven and technology-enabled approach (https://www.global.ntt/healthandwellbeing/).
Lisa Esch is Senior Vice President-Healthcare Provider, Digital Health, Innovation, & Industry Offerings, at NTT DATA Services, where she oversees solutions and offering development, as well as their Go-To-Market strategy within the vertical and serves as the subject matter expert in the client engagements.
Lisa has an extensive background in disruptive technologies, healthcare innovation, strategic planning, and business process improvement.
Before joining NTT Data Services, Lisa was a Senior Healthcare Executive with DXC Technology, and Computer Science Corporation, where she served as the Chief Innovation Officer-Providr Healthcare.
Along with her executive career, Lisa has served on the boards for Empower Education International, Children’s Heart Alliance, Head Start Health, and Student for Student. She began her healthcare career as a Registered Dietitian.
Lisa graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition, from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and completed Graduate Studies in Public Administration from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Lisa is Yellow Belt Certified in Spartans Sales Training and holds a Certificate in Medical Nutrition & Dietetic Internship from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
