Intel Switching to Optical Connections for Computer Components in 2010 Starting at 10 Gigabits per second and Demostrated the Larrabee Chip

April 7, 2017September 23, 2009 by Brian Wang

MIT Technology Review reports that starting in 2010 Intel plans to sell inexpensive cables with fiber-optic-caliber speed to connect, for instance, a laptop and an external hard drive, or a phone and a desktop computer. Speeding up communication inside computers and between computers will By 2010, says Dadi Perlmutter, vice president of Intel’s mobility group, …

Sandia Designing Factory Mass Producable Right Sized Reactor

April 7, 2017August 31, 2009 by Brian Wang

Tom Sanders, Vice President/President Elect American Nuclear Society, is promoting “Global Energy Needs: Defining a Role for a “Right Sized Reactor” [32 page pdf] There is some conflicting information in the 32 page presentation and a Sandia press release. The presentation (May, 2009) talks about a variety of reactor technologies include light water, gas cooled, …

Texas Instrument CTO Alan Gatherer Predicts CPUs from now to 2020

April 7, 2017August 31, 2009 by Brian Wang

EE Times published predictions from Texas Instruments on developments from now to 2020 in computer processors. The predictions are by Alan Gatherer. He is the CTO for the High Performance Multicore Processors group at TI and is responsible for all strategic development of TI’s digital baseband modems for 3G wireless infrastructure 2012: Network-on-Chip (NoC) arrives. …

Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing- Eliezer Yudkowsky and Scott Aaronson

April 7, 2017August 18, 2009 by Brian Wang

Eliezer Yudkowsky, Singularity Institute, Overcoming Bias, Less Wrong and Scott Aaronson, MIT talk for over an hour on Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing at BloggingHeads.tv. The disagreement they have is over timescale. One to ten decades versus a few thousand years. However, Scott Aaronson indicates that nothing in Eliezer Yudowsky position is counter to what …

Future Fuel Efficient Airplanes

April 7, 2017July 29, 2009 by Brian Wang

1. GE Aviation is advancing jet propulsion and its next-generation engine core program, called eCore, through several private- and government-funded R&D programs, many with key technology milestones this year. General Electric is working on HEETE (Highly Efficient Embedded Turbine Engine) A three-year program sponsored by the USAF, HEETE focuses on embedded technologies for the endurance …

Potential Submarine Breakthroughs: Four Times Faster and Super Deep Diving

April 7, 2017July 27, 2009 by Brian Wang

1. Deep flight is a small company that is making deep diving one and two person submarines. Deep Flight II (DFII), which has been designed and is awaiting funding, will be built with acrylic crew hulls for 3,000 feet or with titanium hulls with conventional viewports for 20,000 feet. Ceramic-carbon fibre hull will enable 37,500 …

Carnival of Space 113

April 7, 2017July 25, 2009 by Brian Wang

Jupiter Impact picture taken by Hubble Carnival of space 113 is up at Dynamics of Cats This site provided the interview with Ross Tierney of Direct Launch and an article on breakthroughs in curing radiation sickness. Three is coverage from Samba about the impact on Jupiter. Centauri Dreams reviews a paper on detecting potentially habitable …

Broadband Speeds, Issues, Stimulus and Prospects

April 7, 2017June 7, 2009 by Brian Wang

Lack of competition is the reason why broadband speeds in the United States are not faster and at lower price. Other cable operators are concerned that not only will prices fall, but that the super-fast service will encourage customers to watch video on the Web and drop their cable service. Pretty much the fastest consumer …

Superconducting Computer Chip Breakthrough

April 7, 2017May 28, 2009 by Brian Wang

Artist view of the implantation of gallium ions (animated in blue) into germanium wafers followed by a reconstruction of the lattice using short-term flash-lamp annealing and, finally, of the observation of superconductivity at low temperatures. Other than in normal conductors, superconductivity is caused by the formation of electron pairs with anti-parallel momentum and spin (animated …

Rice University and Stanford University Researchers Have Unzipped Carbon Nanotubes into Thin Graphene Strips

April 7, 2017April 15, 2009 by Brian Wang

Rice University researchers have unzipped carbon nanotubes to make graphene ribbons tens of nanometres wide. This is the cover story from the April 16, 2009 issue of the Journal Nature. “Ribbon structures are very important structures and they’re not easy to make,” says James Tour, a chemist at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Early techniques …

Algae Fuel Cost and Production Breakthroughs

April 7, 2017March 26, 2009 by Brian Wang

Algae Ventures claims to have a method of lowering the cost for harvesting, dewatering, and drying algae by Over 99.75%. Patent documents have been filed and an operational prototype unit has been demonstrated to collaborators who have participated in research and commercialization proposals. Prototype and laboratory testing has successfully been achieved with three species attempted …