Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) will build the world’s first 3-nm fab in the Tainan Science Park in southern Taiwan, where the company does the bulk of its manufacturing. About a year ago, TSMC said it planned to build its next fab at the 5-nm to 3-nm technology node as early as 2022. The more …
Today ASML is selling billions in Extreme Ultraviolet lithography machines. These machines will help deliver chips at the 5 nanometer to 2 nanometer nodes. ASML (Veldhoven, the Netherlands) sold eight more EUV (next-generation extreme ultraviolet lithography) systems in the second quarter. This brings its EUV backlog to 27 tools valued at about 2.8 billion euro …
By the 2030s — Russia may become less dangerous than Iran, which military strategist Andrew Krepinevich forthcoming study from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments ranks currently at No. 3. Krepinevich’s analysis of Russia is similar to Nextbigfuture. Nextbigfuture had noted that long term low oil and gas prices and shrinking population are trends …
Intel’s latest desktop processor (Kaby Lake) offers no performance improvement over its predecessor. In a few years, Intel’s Optane, a superfast SSD (solid state drive) and DRAM replacement that could ultimately unify memory and storage, could cause a radical change in PC architecture. The first Optane SSDs will be in enthusiast PCs, and could cost …
NASA has a proposed asteroid redirect mission which would use an ion propulsion that is 20 times bigger than the recent Dawn mission to Ceres and Vesta. NASA is developing a first-ever robotic mission to visit a large near-Earth asteroid, collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface, and redirect it into a stable orbit around …
Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, expects to return a repaired and upgraded Falcon 9 rocket to flight around the start of December, a company vice president said, less than six months after one exploded shortly after liftoff. The 208-foot-tall (63-meter) rocket carrying cargo for the International Space Station exploded less than three minutes after liftoff …
The seventh J20 fighter jet prototype has been spotted. The Chengdu J-20 is a Stealth, twin-engine fifth-generation fighter aircraft prototype being developed by Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). The J-20 has the potential to rival the F-22A Raptor in performance once appropriate engines become available If J20 …
Millions of overlooked galaxies When researchers took a closer look at surveys of galaxies in the local universe, they found many had been mischaracterised. More careful analysis of images revealed that 21 galaxies that originally looked like big 3D clouds of stars – “giant elliptical galaxies” – were actually flat 2D disc galaxies with bulges …
China’s President Xi outlined at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum how much the world stands to gain from a rising China. He said 500 million Chinese tourists will go abroad over the next five years. This is a conservative estimate. In 2013, 98 million Chinese traveled abroad. That’s an increase of 18% compared to the …
India and China signed a high speed train deal. The India and China deal includes: * Training in heavy haul transportation: A training programme has been finalised for 100 persons * Increasing speed on existing lines: Chennai-Bangalore-Mysore section has been identified for increasing speed to 160 kmph with cooperation from China * Redevelopment of railway …
The performance of a quantum annealer on hard random Ising optimization problems can be substantially improved using quantum annealing correction (QAC). Our error correction strategy is tailored to the D-Wave Two device. They find that QAC provides a statistically significant enhancement in the performance of the device over a classical repetition code, improving as a …