New imaging technology fits on a tiny chip and, from a distance, can form a high-resolution three-dimensional image of an object on the scale of micrometers.
Category: computing – Page 881
A team of physicists has taken a step toward making the essential building block of quantum computers out of pure light. Their advance has to do with logic gates that perform operations on input data to create new outputs.
But the ultimate goals of the project are nothing short of amazing: “The best possible outcome is to map the entirety of existing cache of neural network algorithms and applications to this energy-efficient substrate,” said Modha. “And, to invent entirely new algorithms that were hereto before impossible to imagine.”
IBM scientists are advancing toward “neuromorphic” computing — digital systems that process information like the brain — and launching a complete ecosystem for brain-like computing, with important near-term applications and visionary long-term prospects.
“For decades, computer scientists have been pursuing two elusive goals in parallel: engineering energy-efficient computers modeled on the human brain and designing smart computing systems that learn on their own — like humans do — and are not programmed like today’s computers,” said Dharmendra S. Modha, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist for brain-inspired computing.
Computer scientists have found that robots evolve more quickly and efficiently after a virtual mass extinction modeled after real-life disasters such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs. Beyond implications for artificial intelligence, the research supports the idea that mass extinctions actually speed up evolution by unleashing new creativity in adaptations.
Photo credit: Joel Lehman.
The_Singularity_trailer
Posted in computing, entertainment, neuroscience, singularity
Within the coming decades we’ll have the ability to create computers with greater than human intelligence, bio-engineer our species and redesign matter through nanotechnology, what will it mean to be human? Acclaimed as “a large-scale achievement in its documentation of futurist and counter-futurist ideas” and “the best documentary on the Singularity to date,” THE SINGULARITY is rich with insight, while remaining accessible to mainstream audiences. Some of the world’s leading thinkers, futurists and counter-futurists are interviewed, including Ray Kurzweil, Leon Panetta, Bill McKibben and Richard A. Clarke. THE SINGULARITY is an engaging tool for critical thinking about future technologies.
The world only quantum computer maker says its upgraded chip is 15 times faster than ordinary computers, but experts doubt the comparison is a fair test.
One of the unsung workhorses of modern technology is the humble interconnect. This is essentially a wire or set of wires that link one part of an electronic system to another. In ordinary silicon chips, interconnect can take up most of the area of a chip; and the speed and efficiency with which information can travel along these interconnects, is a major limiting factor in computing performance.
So it’s no wonder that physicists and engineers are creating new generations of interconnect that will become the backbone of information processing machines of the future.
Intel unveiled its new Optane line of SSDs at IDF this week, with a focus on high performance and endurance. The drives should be shipping to the consumer market in 2016.
Cryptographers are working on new encryption methods able to protect today’s Internet communications from future quantum computers that can be able to break today’s cryptography techniques. The researchers have developed upgrades to the Internet’s core encryption protocol that will prevent quantum computer users from intercepting Internet communications.
Quoted: “Sometimes decentralization makes sense.
Filament is a startup that is taking two of the most overhyped ideas in the tech community—the block chain and the Internet of things—and applying them to the most boring problems the world has ever seen. Gathering data from farms, mines, oil platforms and other remote or highly secure places.
The combination could prove to be a powerful one because monitoring remote assets like oil wells or mining equipment is expensive whether you are using people driving around to manually check gear or trying to use sensitive electronic equipment and a pricey a satellite internet connection.
Instead Filament has built a rugged sensor package that it calls a Tap, and technology network that is the real secret sauce of the operation that allows its sensors to conduct business even when they aren’t actually connected to the internet. The company has attracted an array of investors who have put $5 million into the company, a graduate of the Techstars program. Bullpen Capital led the round with Verizon Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Samsung Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Haystack, Working Lab Capital, Techstars and others participating.
To build its technology, Filament is using a series of protocols that include the blockchain transaction database behind Bitcoin; BitTorrent, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing software; Jose, a contract management protocol that is also used in the OAuth authentication service that lets people use their Facebook ID to log in and manage permissions to other sites around the web;TMesh, a long-range mesh networking technology andTelehash for private messaging.”
“This cluster of technologies is what enables the Taps to perform some pretty compelling stunts, such as send small amounts of data up to 9 miles between Taps and keep a contract inside a sensor for a year or so even if that sensor isn’t connected to the Internet. In practical terms, that might mean that the sensor in a field gathering soil data might share that data with other sensors in nearby fields belonging to other farmers based on permissions the soil sensor has to share that data. Or it could be something a bit more complicated like a robotic seed tilling machine sensing that it was low on seed and ordering up another bag from inventory based on a “contract” it has with the dispensing system inside a shed on the property.
The potential use cases are hugely varied, and the idea of using a decentralized infrastructure is fairly novel. Both IBM and Samsung have tested out using a variation of the blockchain technology for storing data in decentralized networks for connected devices. The idea is that sending all of that data to the cloud and storing it for a decade or so doesn’t always make economic sense, so why not let the transactions and accounting for them happen on the devices themselves?
That’s where the blockchain and these other protocols come in. The blockchain is a great way to store information about a transaction in a distributed manner, and because its built into the devices there’s no infrastructure to support for years on end. When combined with mesh radio technologies such as TMesh it also becomes a good way to build out a network of devices that can communicate with each other even when they don’t have connectivity.”
Read the Article, and watch the Video, here > http://fortune.com/2015/08/18/filament-blockchain-iot/