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Next-gen strategy game engine lets you control an army of 5,000 units at one time
Every real-time strategy game has some kind of population cap, limiting the number of units that can be placed simultaneously on a player's terrain. This limit can stem from the designers' need to balance competition between armies, but ultimately it'll also have something to do with the underlying hardware in a PC or console, because a processor will slow down if it's asked to simulate too many independent, physical 3D objects at once. Some RTS games set the limit at 50-70 units, while others can cope with as many as 500, but a new game engine called Nitrous takes things up a level: It uses AMD's Mantle programming tool to speed up communication between the CPU and GPU, allowing up to 5,000 AI- or physics-driven objects (i.e., not mindless clones or animations) to be displayed onscreen at one time. Coming up, we've got a 1080p video of Star Swarm, a demo simulation that shows off what Nitrous can do, plus an explanation of how Oxide Games, the company behind Star Swarm, made this possible.
IBM turns metal oxides into non-volatile chips through liquid currents
IBM is worried that we're reaching the end of the road for CMOS technology -- that we need new materials beyond silicon to keep the power draw down in chips as their performance goes up. It may keep future circuitry extra-lean through a new technique that puts a metal oxide in silicon's place and allows for non-volatile processors and memory. By running ionized liquid electrolytes in currents through the oxide, the company can switch that oxide from an insulator to a conductor (and vice versa) that can reliably maintain its state, even when there's no power. The trick would let a logic gate or switch kick into action only when there's an event, rather than needing constant jolts of electricity -- and without the pressure or temperature changes that had ruled out metal oxides for chips in the past. We're still far from replacing silicon with more efficient oxides given the early state of IBM's work, but having a consistent method is an important first step.
New metal mix could lead to cheap, plentiful sodium-ion batteries in gadgets
Lithium batteries very frequently power our gadgets, but the material itself isn't common and, by extension, isn't cheap. Researchers at the Tokyo University of Science aim to solve that through sodium-ion batteries using a new electrode material. By mixing together oxides of iron, manganese and sodium, Shinichi Komaba and team have managed to get a sodium battery's electrode holding a charge closer to that of a lithium-ion battery while using a much more abundant material. Having just 30 total charges means this simplest form of sodium-ion battery technology could be years away from finding a home in your next smartphone or EV, although it's not the only option. Argonne National Laboratory's Chris Johnson has co-developed a more exotic vanadium pentoxide electrode that could produce 200 charges while keeping the battery itself made out of an ingredient you more often find in your table salt than your mobile gear. [Image credit: Hi-Res Images of Chemical Elements]
Nanogenerators produce electricity by squeezing your fingers together, while you dance
It's been a while since we last heard about nanogenerators -- you know, those insanely tiny fibers that could potentially be woven into your hoodie to juice up your smartphone. Dr. Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology has reported that he and his team of Einsteins constructed nanogenerators with enough energy to potentially power LCDs, LEDs and laser diodes by moving your various limbs. These micro-powerhouses -- strands of piezoelectric zinc oxide, 1 / 500 the width of a single hair strand -- can generate electrical charges when flexed or strained. Wang and his team of researchers shoved a collection of their nanogenerators into a chip 1 / 4 the size of a stamp, stacked five of them on top of one another and can pinch the stack between their fingers to generate the output of two standard AA batteries -- around 3 volts. Although it's not much, we're super excited at this point in development -- imagine how convenient to charge your phone in your pocket sans the bulky battery add-ons. And that's only one application of this technology. Yea, we know.
Engineuity developing hydrogen-creating, emission free vehicle
Just in case there weren't enough alternate fuel developments going on around the world, it looks like we've got yet another vying for business over in Israel. Engineuity, a company started by Amnon Yogev, has reportedly developed a method for vehicles to "produce their own fuel" using metals such as magnesium and aluminum to create hydrogen and steam. Similar to a solar-powered "zinc-to-hydrogen" approach that gained attention in 2005, this method utilizes a "long metal coil" which would be inserted into a metal-steam combustor that stands to "separate hydrogen out of heated water." After intense heating, the metal atoms would purportedly bond to the oxygen from the water, creating metal oxide; the result would free up hydrogen molecules to be sent to the engine alongside the steam to provide the juice. The firm also insinuates that "refueling" the vehicle would be "remarkably simply," and construction could be completed on current production lines without requiring entirely new infrastructures. According to Yogev, the "running cost of the system should be equal to that of conventional cars today," and hopes to have a full scale prototype ready to rumble in "around three years."[Thanks, Mike]
