IntegratedCircuits
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Rambus, Broadcom sign licensing deal, agree to share toys
It never hurts to stop arguing, hug it out and agree on a patent licensing deal. Today, Rambus -- which filed a complaint against Broadcom with the International Trade Commission in 2010 -- signed a licensing deal that resolved those claims. In the statement, Rambus said it will license its patent for integrated circuits used in chips made by Broadcom. The company didn't disclose any financial details related to the deal or which technology would be part of the agreement. However, given that Broadcom's known for its wireless networking chips often found in WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular-capable devices, it seems likely to be in the wireless realm. In other news, Rambus and Broadcom have added each other as Xbox Live friends and gotten to level 36 in Modern Warfare 3 co-op gameplay.
IBM outs integrated circuit that's made from wafer-size graphene, smaller than a grain of salt
Lest you don't care what your circuits are made of, listen up: graphene's the thinnest electrical material, comprising just a single atomic layer. In addition to its electrical, thermal, mechanical, and optical properties, researchers dig it because it has the potential to be less expensive, more energy-efficient, and more compact than your garden-variety silicon. So imagine IBM's delight when a team of company researchers built the first circuit that fits all the components, including inductors and a graphene transistor, on a single wafer -- a setup that consumes less space than a grain of salt. The advantage, scientists say, is better performance than what you'd get from a circuit combining a graphene transistor with external components. In fact, the researchers got the circuit's broadband frequency mixer to operate at 10GHz , a feat that could have implications for wireless gadgets running the gamut from Bluetooth headsets to RFID tags. That's all just a layman's explanation, of course -- check out the latest issue of Science for the full paper in all of its technical glory.
Tabula scores $108 million to bring cheap, programmable chips to the masses
If you were to pry open your laptop, microwave or TV you'd find they're all loaded with an array of highly-specialized silicon. Designing, manufacturing, or just purchasing these chips is a major cost for electronics makers. Semiconductor company Tabula, which just secured $108 million in funding to help bring its 3PLD ABAX reprogrammable chips to market, hopes to make these dedicated components a thing of the past. Compared to similarly customizable FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), Tabula's chips are cheaper, smaller, and faster. This magic trifecta of attributes could put programmable logic into consumer products like HDTVs and may one day allow for hardware to be updated over the internet the way software is now. However, the immediate promise is being able to use the same chip for multiple purposes across several products. That should drive down costs -- and there's no way to make consumers happier than by slashing prices. Full PR and video after the break.
Integrated circuits with no standby power could be in use by year's end
There's certainly no shortage of companies working to make electronics of all sorts more energy efficient, but NEC and Rohm Co now say that they're on the verge of a breakthrough that could change things in a big way, and we could possibly see it in "practical use" by the end of this year. As Tech-On! reports, both companies are hard at work on integrated circuits that consume no power at all when they're in standby mode, and turn themselves on only when power is needed. That's apparently possible by making the entire chip nonvolatile, as opposed to many current chips that only use nonvolatile merged memory. According to NEC, that'll let them "cut dissipation for digital consumer electronics in the standby mode to just a few percent of what it is now," and at no expense of convenience. While NEC isn't making any promises for the near future just yet, Rohm says that it'll begin shipping its first custom ICs in the second half of this year, and that the first products using them could start showing up by the end of 2009.
IBM concocts microscope with ultra-fine resolution, current MRI bows down
The existing MRI has certainly been beneficial to humans everywhere, but IBM researchers are adamant on doing it one better. These gurus, working in tandem with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated "magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI." What it's all mean? In short, it could give scientists the ability to investigate complex 3D structures at the nanoscale level, and according to IBM, it may "ultimately be powerful enough to unravel the structure and interactions of proteins." We know, only the nerdiest of you are amazed -- nay, affected whatsoever -- by that statement, but even the layperson can appreciate advanced methods of studying viruses, bacteria and other biological elements. A certifiably riveting demonstration vid awaits you beyond the break.[Via TG Daily, thanks Speedy]
Flying plasmonic lens system could lead to denser chips / disks
Last we heard, IBM was busy extending optical lithography down to 30-nanometers in order to keep Moore's Law intact, and some two years later, the process is still being honed by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley. Reportedly, gurus there with IQs far greater than ours have developed a new patterning technique (plasmonic nanolithography) that could make "current microprocessors more than 10 times smaller, but far more powerful." Additionally, professor Xiang Zhang asserts that this same technology could eventually "lead to ultra-high density disks that could hold 10 to 100 times more data than disks today." The secret to the madness is a flying plasmonic head, which is compared to the arm and stylus of an LP turntable; the setup enables researchers to "create line patterns only 80-nanometers wide at speeds up to 12-meters per second, with the potential for higher resolution detail in the near future." In layman's terms? That CPU you purchased last month will, in fact, be old hat in due time.[Via Slashdot]
Integrated circuit turns 50, now isn't that nifty?
Hard to believe that Jack Kilby's unsightly concoction (pictured above) turned 50 yesterday, but it's true. Half a century ago, Mr. Kilby crafted the integrated circuit, which ended up having a monumental impact on taking computers from warehouse-sized to, well, not-warehouse-sized. As the story goes, the very first microchip was demonstrated on the 12th of September in 1958, and it passed its first test: "producing a sine wave on an oscilloscope screen." Safe to say we all know how things progressed from there. Here's to you, IC -- and here's to 50 more.[Via MAKE]
