Tag Archives: logic gate

Water Droplet Computer Developed by Stanford Engineers

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Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, and his students have built a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets."In this work,...

Researchers take nanowire transistors vertical, double up on density

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3D silicon is all the rage, and now nanowire transistors have further potential to keep Moore's Law on life support. Researchers at A*STAR have found a way to double the number of transistors on a chip by placing the atomic-scale wires vertically, rather than in the run-of-the-mill planar mode, creating two "wrap-around gates" that put a pair of transistors on a single nanowire. In the future, the tech could be merged with tunnel field effect transistors -- which use dissimilar semiconductor materials -- to create a markedly denser design. That combo would also burn a miniscule percentage of the power required conventionally, according to the scientists, making it useful for low-powered processors, logic boards and non-volatile memory, for starters. So, a certain Intel founder might keep being right after all, at least for a few years more.

Researchers take nanowire transistors vertical, double up on density originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jun 2012 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers say crab-based computing possible, lobsters throw up claws in disbelief

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Japanese researchers say crab-based computing possible, lobsters throw up claws in disbelief
IBM's Holey Optochip? Yawn. Fujitsu's K supercomputer? Yesterday's news. Forget about boring old conventional computing stuff, the future of computer technology lies in crabs -- lots and lots of crabs. Researchers at Kobe University and the University of the West of England's Unconventional Computing Centre have discovered that properly herded crabs can signal the AND, OR and NOT arguments essential to computers, not to mention those crucial 1s and 0s. Forcing two swarms of crabs into one, for instance, represents the OR gate -- a trick the computational crustaceans pulled off fairly reliably. Not every operation was pincer perfect, however, as the crabs tended to stumble a bit through attempts at signaling the AND function. At least guiding a group of crabs isn't as tough as herding cats -- researchers used a shadow to imitate a predatory bird and direct the hapless creatures accordingly. Sure, it may not be the first biological computer, but it just might be the first fear-based computer.

Researchers say crab-based computing possible, lobsters throw up claws in disbelief originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Apr 2012 04:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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