breakthroughs
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MIT has a new chip to make AI faster and more efficient on smartphones
Just one day after MIT revealed that some of its researchers had created a super low-power chip to handle encryption, the institute is back with a neural network chip that reduces power consumption by 95 percent. This feature makes them ideal for battery-powered gadgets like mobile phones and tablets to take advantage of more complex neural networking systems.
Protein-coated discs could enable 50TB capacities
We know that it shouldn't come as a shock anymore when researchers announce new storage technologies that promise to hold tantalizingly large amounts of data, but we were still pretty stoked to learn that a recent breakthrough at Harvard Medical School may eventually lead to DVD-size discs whose capacities approach an eye-popping 50TB. Unlike traditional optical or magnetic solutions, the disc developed by Professor V Renugopalakrishnan and his colleagues is coated with thousands of light-activated proteins called bacteriorhodopsin which are found in the membrane of a particular salt marsh microbe -- and which temporarily convert to a series of intermediate molecules when exposed to sunlight. That property allows the proteins to act as individual bits in a binary system, but since they have a tendency to return to their grounded state after mere hours or days, Renugopalakrishnan and his team modified the requisite microbes' DNA to produce proteins capable of maintaining that intermediary state for several years. Unfortunately we won't see this technology come to market anytime soon, and even when it does, 50TB capacities will still be a ways off, so it looks like we'll have to settle for those disappointing 200GB Blu-ray discs for the foreseeable future.[Via Gotakon]
Sanyo Epson's "Photo Fine Vistarich" enables extreme-viewing-angle LCDs
Researchers at Japan's Sanyo Epson Imaging Devices Corporation have just developed a series of small LCDs that, unlike most traditional displays, are almost perfectly viewable even at extreme 90-degree angles. Available in sizes ranging from 2.4-inches to 10.1-inches, the displays will be employed in any number of portable devices, from cellphones to PDAs to PMPs, although the best use we can think of is to put them on cameras, which should make it a lot easier to see what you're shooting when you need to take pictures over a crowd. As for the use of this so-called "Photo Fine Vistarich" technology in devices that we're viewing personal/secure information on, well, we're not necessarily sure we want to make it easier for everyone on the subway to peep our Treo screen. Sanyo Epson says production of these displays will begin this fall, which mean we should probably see corresponding products on the market before the end of the year.
