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Intel Joins Search for Thought-Controlled Tech

sparky3887 — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:23:07 +0000

Researchers are developing technology that would enable people to control electronic devices using only their thoughts. The technology uses software that can analyze and interpret patterns in the brain’s electrical activity when people think about specific words or actions. “If we could access the global information network simply by using the power of our thoughts, it would open up incredible new opportunities for computing technology,” says Intel’s Dean Pomerleau, who has been working with Carnegie Mellon University researchers to study brain patterns. The U.S. Army is working with University of California, Irvine researchers to study how to harness brain waves to send nonverbal messages in battle. Meanwhile, Mayo Clinic researchers think thoughts can be read faster by placing sensors inside the skull. The Mayo Clinic’s Jerry Shih says that one day people’s brains could be implanted with microchips similar to those used for personal computers. Already, University of Southern California researchers have implanted chips into the brains of rats to try to study ways to boost memory, with applications for Alzheimer’s patients in mind.

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Intel Research Embraces European IT Goals

sparky3887 — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:39:42 +0000

In January of this year, Intel bolstered the collaborative thread of its collaborative European research and development (R&D) initiative, and broadened its research and innovation remit up to the provision of remote services in sectors that include health, education, and government. Intel Labs Europe (ILE) “is a network organization, a new platform for Intel doing research and innovation in Europe,” says National University of Ireland professor and ILE director Martin Curley. He says ILE’s mission is to advance Intel Architecture research, development, and innovation while teaming with European stakeholders to enhance European competitiveness. Intel has set up open labs in Munich and Leixlip, Ireland, to facilitate and host participation in about 20 Framework Program 7 projects with European firms, startups, and universities. Intel’s European research encompasses such areas as nanotechnology, cloud computing, wireless communications, networking, and financial computing. In Leixlip, ILE has four wafer labs where work is ongoing in such areas as alternative circuit patterning using self assembly, memory structures employing magnetic layers, applications for carbon nanotubes in interconnect, and metal oxides research for logic applications. Curley says the Intel-European R&D collaboration has already produced the Rock Creek 48-core chip for parallel processing research and established an exascale computing research center in Paris. ILE terms its innovation agenda Digital Europe, and this is now calibrated with the European Union’s goals for an innovation-based economy and a society with better connectivity.

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Intel Investing Millions for Supercomputer Research in Europe

sparky3887 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:54:02 +0000

Intel is collaborating with three French research institutes to invest in an exascale research center in Europe. The new Exascale Computing Research Center would be able to perform calculations about 1,000 times faster–about 1 million trillion calculations per second–than the fastest supercomputers. Intel, which is partnering with the French Atomic Energy Commission, the Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, and the French National High-Performance Computing Agency, plans to invest several million euros over three years. The Exascale center will be part of Intel Labs Europe, and will employ several dozen researchers who will use the facility to explore weather forecasting, health care, and seismology. “For example, in health care this capability should enable highly sophisticated genome calculations, enabling individualized patient treatment or simulation of cell interactions to provide new cancer treatments,” Intel says in a statement. “Another application can be found in seismology, where exascale computing could enable more detailed prediction of ground movement at sites with high security requirements or where frequent movement is expected.”

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Intel Says Shape-Shifting Robots Closer to Reality

sparky3887 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:01:49 +0000

Researchers at Intel and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) say distributed computing and robotics could be used to make shape-shifting electronics a reality in the not-too-distant future. The researchers are working to take millions of millimeter-sized robots and enable them to use software and electromagnetic forces to change into a variety of shapes and sizes. CMU professor Seth Goldstein and Intel researcher Jason Campbell recently reported that they are able to demonstrate the physics needed to create programmable matter. “It’s been pretty hard but we’ve made a lot of progress,” Campbell says. “Optimistically, we could see this in three to five years.” Programmable matter is called claytronics, and the millimeter-sized robots are called catoms. Each catom would contain its own processor, and would essentially be a tiny robot or computer with computational power, memory, and the ability to store and share power. The goal is to program millions of catoms to work together by developing software that focuses on a pattern or overall movement of the entire system of tiny robots. Each robot will be smart enough to detect its own place in the pattern and respond accordingly. Part of the research effort involves developing new programming languages, algorithms, and debugging tools to get these systems to work together.

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Intel Claims Memory Research Milestone

sparky3887 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:46:08 +0000

Intel and Numonyx recently announced a breakthrough in computer memory research that they say could eventually result in a less expensive and better-performing alternative to existing memory technologies. The two companies have been collaborating on a type of non-volatile memory called phase-change memory (PCM), and report that they have successfully stacked multiple layers of PCM arrays within a single 64 Mb die. By creating a vertically integrated memory cell composed of PCM and an ovonic threshold switch, the researchers demonstrated that it is possible to use the technologies to create chips that cost less and offer better performance and memory densities than traditional NAND flash memory. PCM could provide a better alternative to NAND because it uses significantly less voltage. While NAND uses an electrical charge to store and read memory, PCM uses heat on chalcogenide glass, the same material used in re-writable optical media. Lower voltage use enables PCM to store more memory in a single die while using less power, and at a smaller scale than is possible with NAND. However, switching to PCM may require significant changes to production processes.

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Intel’s Mukherjee Wins ACM Award for Advancing Reliability of Computer Architecture Design

sparky3887 — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:27:09 +0000

ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture presented Shubu Mukherjee with its 2009 Maurice Wilkes Award on June 23 during the International Symposium on Computer Architecture in Austin, Texas. The annual Maurice Wilkes Award was created to honor individuals who have made significant achievements in computer architecture. Mukherjee, an Intel principal engineer and director of the company’s Simulations and Pathfinding for Efficient and Reliable Systems Group, has helped make microprocessors and other silicon chips more reliable by introducing a method of computing soft error rate (SER) that identifies prime candidates for error protection. The technique also makes it easier for chipmakers to determine whether structures need protection to maintain reliability. Mukherjee’s work cleared the way for cost-effective solutions for weighing a processor’s SER against performance, power, and area. The award comes with a $2,500 prize.

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Intel Toots Its Research Horn for Chips–and More

sparky3887 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:53:08 +0000

Intel’s recent Research Day provided demonstrations and previews of the variety of projects that extend beyond the company’s core computer processor business. Projects on display included efforts to improve WiMax regional wireless network technology, advance mobile device processing capabilities while reducing energy consumption, refine software to make large-scale data storage faster, and transmit electricity wirelessly within a small room. Intel’s CTO Justin Rattner also announced that the Corporate Technology Group at Intel will now be called Intel Labs, and will focus on evaluating not only what technology works, but discovering what does not before Intel invests significant funds in that area. Intel also emphasized its efforts to break into the mobile device market. Those efforts include the Atom chips and its next-generation Moorestown processors, which feature lower energy consumption requirements. Intel demonstrated technology that enables a Moorestown system to use less power by using a more aggressive version of existing power-saving techniques, including sending a computer into sleep mode as frequently and deeply as possible. Moorestown also makes platform-level engineering easier by combining numerous computer system elements onto a single processor and integrating graphics, a memory controller, and other elements into a system-on-a-chip, which makes it simpler for one part of a chip to signal when it is idle and does not need power, or when it is about to be busy and needs more power.

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Revolutionary Microchip Uses 30 Times Less Power

sparky3887 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:17:28 +0000

Rice University (02/08/09) Ruth, David

Rice University scientists have developed a microchip that runs seven times faster and uses 30 times less power than existing chip technology. Rice professor Krishna Palem says the chip’s technology, dubbed probabilistic complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (PCMOS), builds on the CMOS technology already used by chip manufacturers, which means chipmakers will not have to buy new equipment to produce PCMOS chips. Palem says PCMOS uses probabilistic logic, a new form of logic developed by Palem and doctoral student Lakshmi Chakrapani. “A significant achievement here is the validation of Rice’s probabilistic analogue to Boolean logic using PCMOS,” says Intel’s Shekhar Borkar. “Coupled with the significant energy and speed advantages that PCMOS offers, this logic will prove extremely important because basic physics dictates that future transistor-based logic will need probabilistic methods.” Silicon transistors become noisy as they get smaller, and engineers have solved this problem by increasing the operating voltage to overpower the noise, making smaller transistors more power-hungry. PCMOS lowers the voltage and deals with noise and computational errors by embracing the errors and uncertainties using probabilistic logic, Palem says. The PCMOS prototypes are application-specific integrated circuits specially designed for encryption. The researchers plan to follow up their proof-of-concept work on encryption with proof-of-concept tests on microchips for cell phones, graphics cards, and medical implants.

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Researchers Cool CPUs With Nano-Size Fridges

sparky3887 — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:42:12 +0000

Computerworld (01/29/09) Lai, Eric

As chips become increasingly dense, the extreme heat they generate has pushed researchers to search for ways to mitigate it. Intel, RTI International, and Arizona State University researchers have developed a micro-refrigerator that can be installed on a chip to remove heat from hot spots. The micro-refrigerator, which would allow nanoscale systems to be smaller, uses less electricity than traditional heat sinks, fans, and liquid cooling systems, says RTI senior researcher Rama Venkatasubramanian. The micro-refrigerator is a super-thin film made from thermoelectric molecules such as Bismuth telluride and Antimony telluride, which convert heat into electricity. Venkatasubramanian describes the technology as using electrons to pump heat away. The researchers say they have been able to reduce heat on a simulated central processing unit by 15 degrees Celsius, but Venkatasubramanian is optimistic that using more thermally conductive materials on the chip would improve the heat reduction by as much as 40 degrees Celsius. The micro-refrigerator also would be very efficient because it can target hot spots on the chip and uses only between 2 to 3 watts when active.

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Intel Forms Lab in Europe

sparky3887 — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:16:01 +0000

EE Times (01/29/09) Clarke, Peter

The formation of Intel Labs Europe (ILE) will enable the chipmaker to reorganize its research efforts in Europe under a single management structure. Martin Curley, professor of technology and business innovation at the National University of Ireland and global director of IT innovation at Intel, will serve as the director of ILE, which will establish “open labs” in Leixlip, Ireland, and Munich, Germany. Intel wants to host participation in European Union Framework 7 (FP7) projects and other collaborative research with companies and universities in Europe. ILE projects will likely involve visual computing, software development, enterprise solutions, green computing, advanced microprocessor research, and high performance computing. “With the foundation of ILE, Intel is establishing a strong network of its existing labs in Europe and preparing a platform for further potential investment and advanced innovation activity,” the company says in a statement. Intel labs in Europe include facilities in Braunschweig, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; Gdansk, Poland; and Cologne, Germany.

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