Hardware

One of artificial intelligence's most stubborn problems is enabling AI systems to accumulate new knowledge without losing what they previously learned. A team of researchers at the MATRIX AI Consortium at The University of Texas at San Antonio may have solved this issue with Genesis, a spiking neuromorphic accelerator chip... Read more

Mobile phones today handle far more wireless signals and services than earlier generations. The same is true of the sophisticated equipment behind mobile networks, such as base stations, and emerging technologies such as self-driving cars. Inside these systems, radio-frequency switches act like traffic controls, allowing signals to pass or blocking... Read more

A research team has developed the world's first chip that can match the speed at which the human brain functions. The study, titled "A sub–10-millisecond neural dynamical system based on phase-change memristors," was published in Science and was led by Professor Yang Yuchao of Peking University, together with researchers from... Read more

High-frequency waves classified as terahertz occupy a relatively underused region of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared light and microwaves. Researchers have long recognized their unique potential for applications including ultrafast wireless communication, security screening, remote sensing and medical imaging.... Read more

Infrared cameras can be used to spot useful information that our eyes can't see, such as gases escaping from a pipeline, chemicals in the atmosphere or heat leaking from a building. But sensing infrared light in sophisticated ways still requires expensive, bulky systems.... Read more

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University studying inkjet printing have introduced ultra-fine bubbles into ink droplets and showed that their drying behavior can be tuned without additives. They discovered that the shape of the particle-laden film left after a droplet dries can be radically modified by adjusting the number of bubbles.... Read more

Conventional computers process and store information using separate components, known as a processor and memory unit. Because transferring data from one component to the other can be energy-consuming, many electronics engineers have been trying to develop new devices that rely on a single component to store and process information.... Read more

Solving complex optimization problems is central to many modern technologies, from logistics and financial modeling to chip design, communications and artificial intelligence (AI). However, as these problems grow in size, conventional computers often require substantial time and energy to search for good solutions.... Read more

A research team led by Prof. Junghyup Lee of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at DGIST has become the first in the world to develop a "time-interleaved noise-shaping SAR ADC (analog-to-digital converter)" semiconductor chip capable of simultaneously measuring multiple biosignals, including electrocardiograms (ECG) and electromyograms (EMG). The... Read more

Lithium-ion batteries in personal electronic devices (PEDs) such as laptops, smartphones, powerbanks and electronic cigarettes can pose a serious safety risk in air travel. Damaged or overheated batteries can combust or explode. In the LOKI-PED project, the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI and the Fraunhofer Institute for Building... Read more

OpenAI on Wednesday unveiled its first custom-designed computer chip, called Jalapeno, built to run ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products faster and more cheaply.... Read more

A supercomputer in China now outranks its U.S. counterparts as the world's most powerful, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation's technological prowess.... Read more

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are artificial intelligence (AI) models inspired by how biological neurons communicate with each other. While biological neurons exchange information in the form of electrical impulses, SNNs rely on brief signals known as spikes.... Read more

A new chip developed by MIT researchers could help tiny, low-power UAVs avoid obstacles as they zip around tight corners inside an industrial HVAC system to check for gas leaks. The chip allows small autonomous robots and other battery-limited devices to construct detailed 3D maps of their environments in real... Read more

Neuromorphic computing is a computing approach that mimics how the human brain works. Our gray matter is a marvel of nature, capable of handling huge volumes of data with incredible energy efficiency. While modern AI hardware is becoming better at processing complex tasks, it consumes vast amounts of energy.... Read more

The information exchanged by modern devices is typically protected by cryptographic techniques, approaches that convert readable data into scrambled, unreadable code that can only be deciphered by authorized parties or devices. To descramble encrypted data, devices or accounts need access to randomly generated cryptographic keys, unique, randomly generated sequences of... Read more

Inspired by the human brain, Oregon State University researchers have developed a new light-sensitive device that combines sensing and memory while controlling how digital memories strengthen or fade over time. The research was published in Advanced Functional Materials.... Read more

As artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital services continue to expand, the world is facing a growing need for faster and more energy-efficient ways to store and process information. A team led by the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) has developed a new magnetic memory material that... Read more

A new kernel (core program) within an operating system gives researchers a cleaner view of what's happening inside a processor. Called Fractal and developed at MIT, the kernel has already surfaced previously unknown behavior in Apple's M1.... Read more

Every day, billions of people trust computer chips to protect their most sensitive information, ranging from banking passwords to national security secrets. But what if those chips were secretly compromised before they even left the factory?... Read more

Randomness forms a crucial backbone of modern society, where every encryption key, secure transaction and digital signature depends on random numbers that no adversary can predict. But every random number generator ever deployed, classical or quantum, has asked its users to take the hardware's honesty on faith.... Read more

The rapid advancement and diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as the machine learning models underpinning the functioning of ChatGPT, Gemini and similar platforms, have posed new demands on the electronics engineering industry. In fact, these systems are computationally intensive and consume substantial power, particularly when running on existing... Read more

Researchers led by Takaki Hatsui at the RIKEN SPring-8 Center (RSC) in Japan and collaborators have developed a new approach to compressing X-ray imaging data in real time, reducing the size of data files by more than 8,000 times, while at the same time preserving the detailed X-ray intensity information... Read more

Laptop chipmakers such as Intel and AMD should be worried about their new rival Nvidia, experts say, after the US hardware titan announced Monday a push into the personal computer market.... Read more

Cornell researchers have developed a new type of computing device that stores information electrically but reads it through tiny mechanical motion, an unusual approach that could open a path toward more energy-efficient hardware for artificial intelligence and scientific computing.... Read more

Nvidia unveiled a powerful laptop chip for Windows machines on Monday, staking its claim in the market for next-generation consumer PCs integrated with artificial intelligence.... Read more

By stacking transistors on top of one another, rather than laying them side by side on a flat chip, many electronic engineers are hopeful that vast amounts of computing power could be packed into tiny spaces, all while cutting energy use. So far, however, the ability to build these monolithic... Read more

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed an optical device that reveals hidden images and changes colors in response to different levels of humidity. The technology, published in Light: Science & Applications, could lead to the development of new anti-counterfeiting labels, secure data storage, interactive displays, and... Read more

Photonic devices are hardware systems that can process information using light instead of electricity. These systems could potentially perform computations faster than electronic devices, while also consuming less energy.... Read more

Researchers have developed a memory technology that can store and retain data using almost no electricity by controlling spin states through temperature changes. The work, led by researchers from POSTECH and Chungnam National University, demonstrates non-volatile switching driven by temperature changes rather than electric currents. The approach could reduce energy... Read more

A new hardware-software co-design increases AI energy efficiency and reduces latency, enabling real-time processing of continuous data streams like video or sensor feeds. The neuromorphic approach unlocks the ability to run powerful, real-time AI directly on local edge devices like phones, hearing aids or autonomous vehicle cameras, according to a... Read more

In an effort to meet the rising energy demands of data centers, engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new chip design that could improve how graphics processing units (GPUs) convert and manage power. The technology demonstrates a more efficient way to perform a critical task... Read more

To improve data center efficiency, multiple storage devices are often pooled together over a network so many applications can share them. But even with pooling, significant device capacity remains underutilized due to performance variability across the devices. MIT researchers have now developed a system that boosts the performance of storage... Read more

A cross-institutional research team has developed Co-Located Authentication and Processing (CLAP), a privacy-preserving system that overcomes the trade-off between security and performance in edge computing devices. The study, titled "Privacy-preserving data analysis using a memristor chip with co-located authentication and processing," is published in Science Advances. The team was led... Read more

In a recent study published in Nature Communications, researchers created a memristor that uses a built-in oxygen gradient to produce slow, stable conductance changes, enabling a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm to learn faster and more stably than conventional approaches.... Read more

A new type of computer chip that uses the physics of materials to process information could make some artificial intelligence (AI) systems far more energy efficient, researchers have found. Loughborough University physicists have developed a device that can process data that changes over time directly in hardware, rather than relying... Read more

The electronics inside your phone, your car, and every satellite currently orbiting Earth share one critical weakness: heat. Push them past about 200 degrees Celsius and they start to fail. For decades, that thermal ceiling has been one of the hardest walls in engineering. Now a team at the University... Read more

Think about how easily you recognize a friend in a dimly lit room. Your eyes capture light, while your brain filters out background noise, retrieves stored visual information, and processes the image to make a match. It all happens in a fraction of a second and uses remarkably little energy.... Read more

The human brain constantly makes decisions. It requires minimal power to move bodies in a desired direction or avoid an object. A Purdue University engineer uses the brain's efficiency as inspiration to help autonomous vehicles, such as drones and robots, make crucial, time-sensitive decisions while operating in the field.... Read more

An international research team has reported an artificial nociceptor system that captures the temperature-dependent threshold modulation of biological nociceptors. Published in Advanced Functional Materials under the title "Temperature-Modulated Threshold Response in a Volatile Memristor: Toward a Biomimetic Polymodal Nociceptive System," the study was led by Professor Hee-Dong Kim of Sejong... Read more

Researchers have developed a holographic data storage approach that stores and retrieves information in three dimensions by combining three properties of light—amplitude, phase and polarization. By allowing more data to be stored in the same space, the new approach could help advance efforts to meet the growing global demand for... Read more

As AI processing demands reach the limits of current CMOS technology, neuromorphic computing—hardware and software that mimic the human brain's structure—can help process information faster and more efficiently. A new memristor made from 2D layers of bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) combines long-term data retention and analog tuning to enhance AI energy... Read more

Thanks to the 5th generation (5G) technology, we now enjoy unprecedented levels of connectivity. Nevertheless, wireless data traffic is facing an increasing demand for an even higher capacity and faster data transfer—a demand that, according to Edholm's law, could exceed the terabit per second before 2035.... Read more

AI-generated images and videos pose a threat to democratic processes and undermine trust within society. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed chip technology that enables verification of the authenticity of sensor data including images or videos. Their study is published in the journal Nature Electronics.... Read more

Every second, scientific experiments produce a flood of data—so much that transmitting and analyzing it can slow down even the most advanced research. To help scientists better manage this data deluge, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed a new computer chip that rapidly... Read more

Researchers have developed a new kind of nanoelectronic device that could dramatically cut the energy consumed by artificial intelligence hardware by mimicking the human brain. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, developed a form of hafnium oxide that acts as a highly stable, low-energy "memristor"—a component designed to... Read more

A team of Korean researchers has developed the world's first technology that can freely connect and disconnect core computing resources such as memory and accelerators with "light" in next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) datacenters. Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced the development of a new optical switch based datacenter resource... Read more

A research team led by Lee Hyun Jun and Noh Hee Yeon from the Division of Nanotechnology at DGIST has succeeded in implementing the world's first two-terminal-based artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor that precisely controls hydrogen with electrical signals to enable self-learning and memory. The team's work appears in Advanced Science.... Read more

Edge computing is an emerging IT architecture that enables the processing of data locally by smartphones, autonomous vehicles, local servers, and other IoT devices instead of sending it to be processed at a centralized large data center. This approach could allow artificial intelligence (AI) models and other computational systems to... Read more

A team led by engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a new brain-inspired hardware platform that could help computer hardware keep pace with the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. By combining memory and computation on the same chip—and allowing its components to interact collectively like neurons... Read more