MNB technologies has an FPGA mini-board that runs Linux called turboRTAG. This would fit in the desired form factor but would need to be upgraded with a more powerful configuration. MNB Technologies Inc., is in the process of developing a wearable superworkstation with the capacity of 12 Gflops (six dual core processors) in a gadget …
Eric Drexler, the visionary of molecular nanotechnology and mechanosynthesis, has started a new blog Metamodern: The Trajectory of Technology. Metamodern isn’t intended to be “a blog about nanotechnology”; its scope includes broader issues involving technologies with world-changing potential. For example, looking well downstream in technology development, I will sketch the requirements for large-scale systems able …
Joe Bonometti, gave a Google Tech talk on liquid fluoride thorium reactors. 11MB of powerpoint slides “ Besides the low amount of waste and almost complete burning of all Uranium and Plutonium, another big advantage of liquid fluoride reactors is fast and safe shutoff and restart capability. This fast stop and restart allows for load …
Dramatic enhancement in energy harvesting for a narrow range of dimensions in piezoelectric nanostructures around the critical size of 20-23 nanometer thick beams. Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) material employed in the form of cantilever beams, our results indicate that the total harvested power peak value can increase by 100% around 21 nm beam thickness (under …
The AMD Firestream setup from Aprius could be better with eight of the $1499 boards ($12000 plus some amont for the 4U box and backplane.) It will outperform the Nvidia setup and be out in about 4-6 months. Of course Nvidia could go through another rev from its current setup. The FireStream 9270 uses a …
1. A Colombian woman has become the world’s first recipient of windpipe tissue constructed from a combination of donated tissue and her own cells. Stem cells harvested from the woman’s bone marrow were used to populate a stripped-down section of windpipe received from a donor, which was then transplanted into her body in June. The …
The panel and presentations on life extension were the highlight of the Convergence08 unconference. – Gregory Benford’s companyGenescient has bought Methuselah fruit flies. The flies were not allowed to breed until half were dead. So selective breeding over 28 years has resulted in flies that live 4.5 times longer than normal. Over 700 genes have …
Nvidia has desktop supercomputers through several retail partners that have a peak of 4 teraflops performance using GPGPUs and a cost in the range of $8000-10,000 Nvidia personal supercomputing information is here There are links to the online retailers for the Nvidia desktop supercomputers here Here is the datasheet for the Convey Computer HC-1. In …
Hyperion Power Generation is venture capital funded company that is trying to factory mass produce a uranium hydride nuclear reactor. $25-30 million per unit which would be 15-20 tons and generate 27 MW of electricity and 70 MW thermal. It would burn up to 50% of the uranium nuclear fuel for 5-10 years. It would …
The Economist estimates China’s past and current growth. They also examine China $600 billion stimulus effort. Any analysis of China’s growth prospects is clouded by the widely held belief that the government smoothes its GDP numbers and always overstates growth during economic downturns. The chart plots China’s official growth rate against an alternative estimate calculated …
GE90 engine is an example of improving engine affordability and with better performance Phase 2 and 3 of the Versatile Affordable Advanced Turbine Engines (VAATE) program are being funded. The VAATE program is structured in three phases to achieve 4X performance/cost by 2009, 6X performance/cost by 2013 and 10X performance/cost by 2017. The Adaptive Versatile …