Items tagged with Silicon

Scientists across multiple disciplines are working together in order to create biocomputers, where brain organoids serve as biological hardware. While brain organoids are not "mini-brains," the scientists say they share key aspects of brain function and structure essential for cognitive functions like learning and... Read more...
A recent job listing shows Microsoft is on the hunt for a Director of SoC Architecture, a full-time position within its Surface division. The job listing outlines the necessary qualifications to be considered for the role and some of the responsibilities, but the potentially most interesting aspect is what it doesn't... Read more...
As part of an effort to accelerate its investments in the United States, Apple announced it is committing more than $430 billion over the next five years towards different projects across the country, including a new high-tech campus being built in North Carolina. According to Apple, these investments will lead to the... Read more...
Remember when a 1TB hard drive seemed enormous? There was also a time when the idea of having even 8GB of memory in our personal computers seemed like extreme overkill. Today, that's basically the starting point for most PCs. As time goes on, and tech improves, even today's storage types and sizes are bound to seem... Read more...
Three atoms thick. According to a paper published this week in the science journal Nature by a group of researchers from Cornell University, that is the breadth of the transistors that can now be produced using an experimental — and highly conductive — material called transition metal dichalcogenide (also called a... Read more...
The trickle-down effect has applied to technology for some time, but this feels more rapid than usual. Just a few years after LTE was introduced, and reserved only for flagship phones, Qualcomm has introduced a new SoC that could bring LTE access to millions of new users. The new Snapdragon 200 tier (namely the... Read more...
The television may not be what it once was for a mainstay like Toshiba, but the company's still investing in other growth areas. Just this week, it announced plans to plow 200 billion yen (around $1.9 billion) into its chip business beyond the current year. The outfit's CEO, Hisao Tanaka, confessed as much during an... Read more...
If you needed concrete proof that we should all be amazed at just how quickly things change in the technology world, look no further. In 2009, Intel proudly boasted that it would spend around $7 billion to build a massive fabrication facility in Arizona. In the years since, the PC market has essentially been told that it's dying (and soon),... Read more...
You have to wonder: how many companies have to do the same thing before it officially becomes a trend? With Samsung, Apple and select mega-corporations all mulling the idea (or moving forward with plans) to construct their own silicon, it shouldn't come as a major surprise to hear that Lenovo is considering the same. Of course, Lenovo makes... Read more...
You know, it's not often we get to bestow upon you words of pure wisdom.  Sure, we provide detailed, timely news, product and technology analysis but really, we're not in the business of covering your backside.  That's what Moms are for or your personal Wingman or Wingwoman, as the case may be.  That said, we'll give you a bit... Read more...
Intel's Silicon Photonics Advancement Aims to Accelerate Future Computing, Communications SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 7, 2008 - Intel researchers have made the next advance in the field of Silicon Photonics by achieving world-record performance using a silicon-based Avalanche Photodetector (APD) that could lower costs and improve performance... Read more...
Companies have been trying to find a way around Moore's Law for quite some time now, and a large part of that search involves new materials.  One such material is called Graphene, and can be made into flexible sheets only a single atom thin."Graphene is mechanical tough, flexible, transparent, and a great conductor of heat.  The... Read more...
Seattle has been a boomtown a half-a-dozen times over the years. Looks like it is again. The entrepreneurs of the digital age seemed to have settled on the Seattle area as the next big thing - the overcast version of Silicon Valley.   “The Seattle start-up ecosystem is vibrant, and growing rapidly,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial-intelligence... Read more...
Is sixty years a long time? I guess, but it's not ancient history. On December 16, 1947 at Bell Laboratories  in New Jersey, the world's first transistor was born. Ever since the people at Bell got over wondering just what they needed those little semiconductor amplifiers for, when they had perfectly good vacuum tubes hanging around to... Read more...
Well, I assume they do. They seem to know more about it than anybody. In a breakthrough paper  delivered in the Optics Express journal, IBM has demonstrated their method for greatly improving the  transfer of information between multiple computer chip cores, substituting  optical signals sent through silicon for electrical pulses... Read more...
Why would Silicon Valley, which birthed the idea of the cubicle, be moving away from it?  Even Intel, which is often credited with the idea, is rethinking it.Cubicles can prompt odd behavior, people who have studied them said. It is hard to see if colleagues are busy, so some cube-dwellers will send emails to a neighbor about a simple... Read more...
I know that it's crazyI know that it's nowhereBut there is no denying thatIt's hip to be square(Huey Lewis & the News)Admit it: Silicon Valley is the land of the Geek. For startups, this generally translates to things like video games, foosball and table tennis.  Now the latest "stress reliever" in Silicon Valley is that old schoolyard... Read more...
Silicon Valley And World Leaders To Partner, Bring Technology To Developing Countries Intel Chairman: Speeding Access Will Improve Education, Health Care, Entrepreneurism, Government Services MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 28, 2007 - Members of a special United Nations group met today with Silicon Valley leaders to... Read more...
Silicon -- the archetypal semiconductor -- has at long last been shown to demonstrate superconductivity. By substituting 9% of the silicon atoms with boron atoms, Physicists in France have found that the resistance of the material drops sharply when cooled below 0.35 K (Nature 444 465).... Read more...