Hardware

As demand grows for more powerful and efficient microelectronics systems, industry is turning to 3D integration—stacking chips on top of each other. This vertically layered architecture could allow high-performance processors, like those used for artificial intelligence, to be packaged closely with other highly specialized chips for communication or imaging. But... Read more

Combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) arise in various fields such as shift scheduling, traffic routing, and drug development. However, they are challenging to solve using traditional computers in a practical timeframe.... Read more

What happens when trailblazing engineers and industry professionals team up? The answer may transform the future of computing efficiency for modern data centers.... Read more

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, researchers at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) have identified a breakthrough that could make AI technologies faster and more efficient.... Read more

In a new Nature Communications study, researchers have developed an in-memory ferroelectric differentiator capable of performing calculations directly in the memory without requiring a separate processor.... Read more

A research team has introduced a new out-of-core mechanism, Capsule, for large-scale GNN training, which can achieve up to a 12.02× improvement in runtime efficiency, while using only 22.24% of the main memory, compared to SOTA out-of-core GNN systems. This work was published in the Proceedings of the ACM on... Read more

Space is a highly volatile environment. Factors like radiation, extreme temperatures, and debris make outer space a challenging environment for operating technology. In particular, radiation can have devastating effects on computer chips.... Read more

Penn Engineers have developed the first programmable chip that can train nonlinear neural networks using light—a breakthrough that could dramatically speed up AI training, reduce energy use and even pave the way for fully light-powered computers.... Read more

The emergence of AI has profoundly transformed numerous industries. Driven by deep learning technology and Big Data, AI requires significant processing power for training its models. While the existing AI infrastructure relies on graphical processing units (GPUs), the substantial processing demands and energy expenses associated with its operation remain key... Read more

Computer chips that combine the use of light and electricity are shown to increase computational performance, while reducing energy consumption, compared with conventional electronic chips. The photonic computing chips, described in two papers in Nature this week, might address the growing computing demands driven by advancing artificial intelligence technology.... Read more

A new way to temporarily store memory, Gigaflow, helps direct heavy traffic in cloud data centers caused by AI and machine learning workloads, according to a study led by University of Michigan researchers.... Read more

A smaller, lighter and more energy-efficient computer, demonstrated at the University of Michigan, could help save weight and power for autonomous drones and rovers, with implications for autonomous vehicles more broadly.... Read more

More than seven years ago, cybersecurity researchers were thoroughly rattled by the discovery of Meltdown and Spectre, two major security vulnerabilities uncovered in the microprocessors found in virtually every computer on the planet.... Read more

Korean researchers have developed a digital holography processor that converts two-dimensional (2D) videos into real-time three-dimensional (3D) holograms. This technology is expected to play a key role in the future of holography, as it enables the instantaneous transformation of ordinary 2D videos into 3D holograms.... Read more

A team of researchers from Cornell Tech has developed a new tool designed to revolutionize hardware troubleshooting, with the help of 3D phone scans.... Read more

Nvidia founder Jensen Huang kicked off the company's artificial intelligence developer conference on Tuesday by telling a crowd of thousands that AI is going through "an inflection point."... Read more

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang on Tuesday showcased cutting-edge chips for artificial intelligence and new applications for the technology, shrugging off talk of China's DeepSeek disrupting the market and dangers from U.S. President Donald Trump's trade wars.... Read more

Servers that may contain AI-powering Nvidia chips shipped from the United States to Singapore ended up in Malaysia, but their actual final destination remains a mystery, the city-state's interior minister said Monday.... Read more

For decades, researchers have been exploring how to store data in glass because of its potential to hold information for a long time—eons—without applying power. A special type of glass that changes color in different wavelengths of light, called photochromic glass, holds promise for stable, reusable data storage.... Read more

The current microelectronics manufacturing method is expensive, slow and energy and resource intensive.... Read more

Many conventional computer architectures are ill-equipped to meet the computational demands of machine learning-based models. In recent years, some engineers have thus been trying to design alternative architectures that could be better suited for running these models.... Read more

Imagine you're a chef with a highly sought-after recipe. You write your top-secret instructions in a journal to ensure you remember them, but its location within the book is evident from the folds and tears on the edges of that often-referenced page.... Read more

How much energy is consumed each time we upload an image to social media, which relies on data centers and cloud storage? Data centers currently account for about 1% of global energy consumption, amounting to 200 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. This immense energy demand has driven researchers to explore innovative... Read more

New technology from Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, is helping the EU establish its own competitive computer manufacturing industry. Researchers have developed components critical for optimizing on-chip memory, a key factor in enhancing the performance of next-generation computers.... Read more

The US tech giant Apple has always advertised security assurances alongside ever faster processor performance for its products.... Read more

Looking for a quick fix for their fast-growing electricity diets, tech giants are increasingly looking to strike deals with power plant owners to plug in directly, avoiding a potentially longer and more expensive process of hooking into a fraying electric grid that serves everyone else.... Read more

Neuromorphic computing—a field that applies principles of neuroscience to computing systems to mimic the brain's function and structure—needs to scale up if it is to effectively compete with current computing methods.... Read more

Imagine smartphones that can diagnose diseases, detect counterfeit drugs or warn of spoiled food. Spectral sensing is a powerful technique that identifies materials by analyzing how they interact with light, revealing details far beyond what the human eye can see.... Read more

As artificial intelligence models become increasingly advanced, electronics engineers have been trying to develop new hardware that is better suited for running these models, while also limiting power-consumption and boosting the speed at which they process data. Some of the most promising solutions designed to meet the needs of machine... Read more

A research team from NIMS and the Japan Fine Ceramics Center (JFCC) has developed a next-generation AI device—a hardware component for AI systems—that incorporates an iono-magnonic reservoir. This reservoir controls spin waves (collective excitations of electron spins in magnetic materials), ion dynamics and their interactions.... Read more

The rapid technological advancements of our world have been enabled by our capacity to design and fabricate ever smaller electronic chips. These underpin computers, mobile phones and every smart device deployed to date.... Read more

Existing computer systems have separate data processing and storage devices, making them inefficient for processing complex data like AI. A KAIST research team has developed a memristor-based integrated system similar to the way our brain processes information. It is now ready for application in various devices, including smart security cameras,... Read more

Neuromorphic chips that process information like the human brain—this is the goal of physicist Heidemarie Krüger and her Dresden-based startup Techifab. The researcher from the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena is developing a technology that processes and stores data directly at the point... Read more

Artificial intelligence is moving from data centers to "the edge" as computer makers build the technology into laptops, robots, cars and more devices closer to home.... Read more

Researchers at Stanford University, Princeton University, and Dexterity recently developed TidyBot++, a holonomic mobile robot that can perform various household chores and could help to train or test new algorithms for robotics applications.... Read more

The rise of AI, graphic processing, combinatorial optimization and other data-intensive applications has resulted in data-processing bottlenecks, as ever greater amounts of data must be shuttled back and forth between the memory and compute elements in a computer. The physical distance is small, but the process can occur billions of... Read more

In a packed Las Vegas arena, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang stood on stage and marveled over the crisp real-time computer graphics displayed on the screen behind him. He watched as a dark-haired woman walked through ornate gilded double doors and took in the rays of light that poured in through... Read more

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a suite of new products, services and partnerships at CES 2025.... Read more

In a packed Las Vegas arena, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang stood on stage and marveled over the crisp real-time computer graphics displayed on the screen behind him. He watched as a dark-haired woman walked through ornate gilded double doors and took in the rays of light that poured in through... Read more

EU rules requiring all new smartphones, tablets and cameras to use the same charger came into force on Saturday, in a change Brussels said will cut costs and waste.... Read more

The electronics industry is approaching a limit to the number of transistors that can be packed onto the surface of a computer chip. So, chip manufacturers are looking to build up rather than out.... Read more

A new material for high density data storage can be erased and recycled in a more efficient and sustainable way, providing a potential alternative to hard disk drives, solid-state drives and flash memory in the future.... Read more

Optical fibers carry voice and data at high speeds across long distances, and IBM Research scientists are bringing this speed and capacity somewhere they haven't previously gone: inside data centers and onto circuit boards, where they will help accelerate generative AI computing.... Read more

Huawei Technologies Co.'s latest flagship smartphone is powered by a chip little different from the one that set off alarm bells in Washington a year ago, signaling a slowdown in the Chinese company's tech advances.... Read more

Devices called encoders, located inside the sensors on autonomous cars, convert motion and other information acquired on the road into electrical signals that can then be used as feedback for the software running the vehicle to make informed decisions.... Read more

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS, in collaboration with HOLOEYE Photonics AG, have developed a compact LCOS microdisplay with high refresh rates that enables improved optical modulation. This innovative microdisplay will be presented for the first time at the 31st International Display Workshops (IDW 2024) held Dec.... Read more

To make sense of the world, most humans rely in great part on their vision. Recent research suggests that the human visual system is hierarchical, meaning that it processes information on different levels, ranging from the low-level processing of sensory stimuli to the high-level processing associated with more advanced cognitive... Read more

Building the current crop of artificial intelligence chatbots has relied on specialized computer chips pioneered by Nvidia, which dominates the market and made itself the poster child of the AI boom.... Read more

Two-and-a-half years after breaking the exascale barrier, the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory continues to set new standards for its computing speed and performance.... Read more

The Bay Area has just won a coveted crown in computing, with a massive new machine at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory deemed the most powerful system in the world.... Read more