Category: Science & Engineering

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From Engadget: Qualcomm Atheros flaunts 802.11ac WiFi module for Snapdragon S4

The 802.11ac WiFi standard may sound like an alphabetical step backwards, but for high-bandwidth tasks like 1080p streaming it promises to wipe the face off 802.11n. Qualcomm Atheros wants its share of the billion unit pie and has just launched a series of products to flesh out its 802.11ac ecosystem. Top billing goes to the WCN3680 WiFi/BlueTooth/FM combo module, which plugs into the new Snapdragon S4 (MSM8960) and offers speeds of up to 433Mbps to complement that blistering CPU performance. Since the S4 already includes built-in b/g/n WiFi (not to mention its 3G/4G/LTE baseband), manufacturers who choose to add the 802.11ac component will achieve full WiFi cross-compatibility and make many consumers happy in the process. Meanwhile, you’ll also find similar multilingual abilities in QA’s other 5G WiFi modules for PCs, laptops, routers and enterprise, which are all detailed in the PR after the break. Rest assured that we’ll bring you more hands-on impressions of the latest Snapdragon just as soon as things kick off at MWC— and hopefully in the form of a finished, market-ready tablet or handset.

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From Engadget: SanDisk makes 128-gigabit flash chip, crams three bits per cell, takes afternoon off

SanDisk has developed a chip that earns it membership in the exclusive 128-gigabit club. Not content with simply matching the Micron / Intel effort, SanDisk and its partner Toshiba claim their new memory uses 19- rather than 20-nanometer cells in the production process. Shrinking the size is one thing, but SanDisk’s new chips also use its X3 / three-bit technology. Most memory stores just two bits per cell; cramming in another means fewer cells, less silicon, more savings, cheaper memory, happier geeks. Analyst Jim Handy estimates that the price per gigabyte for the tri-bit breed of flash could be as low as 28 cents, compared to 35 for the Micron / Intel equivalent. Full details in the not-so-compact press release after the break.

Continue reading SanDisk makes 128-gigabit flash chip, crams three bits per cell, takes afternoon off

 

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From Engadget: LightBeam pico projector turns any surface into a display, any object into a remote

Do you ever stop to think about all those plain, unloved surfaces in the world, which go through life without ever once being used to reflect a Flickr feed or Facebook wall? It amounts to hectares of wasted potential, but there is a solution. It’s called LightBeam and it’s a ‘nomadic’ pico projector that uses a webcam to track and reorient its display to suit any ad hoc surface — the piece of paper in your hand, the cover of a book, or the picture frame on your desk. And just when you think you’ve seen it all before, the guy in the video after the break rotates a coffee mug to flip the channel. Handy, no?

Continue reading LightBeam pico projector turns any surface into a display, any object into a remote (video)

 

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From Engadget: Qualcomm Krait S4 SoC fully benchmarked, diagnosed as ‘insane’

Qualcomm Krait S4 benchmarks

We’ve seen it, touched it and we fully expect it’ll be turning heads in Barcelona next week, but until now Qualcomm’s Krait chip has largely escaped the rigors of independent benchmarking. Fortunately, AnandTech has to come to our rescue once again with a characteristically thorough analysis at the source link. Those blue and green charts can speak for themselves, but if you’re in a rush then here’s the rub of it: the Krait truly is a next-gen SoC, with the dual-core 1.5GHz MSM8960-powered reference handset delivering an “insane performance advantage” of between 20 percent and 240 percent on CPU benchmarks. As we glimpsedrecently, graphics performance is somewhat less ground-breaking but still very healthy, with the 28nm process allowing the Adreno 225 GPU to run at up to 400MHz, versus 266MHz on its Adreno 220 predecessor. Oh yes, this is going to be one mother of an MWC.

 

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From Ars Technica: We can do no Moore: a transistor from single atom


At the center of modern technology lies the logic circuitry provided by semiconductor devices. Extending circuit logic to the realm of nanotechnology requires the construction of atomic-scale systems, which has proven challenging. Both the electric nature of individual atoms and the need to place them at specific points within a crystal lattice has kept scientists from creating atom-scale transistors until the present.

Now, a group of researchers has fabricated a single-atom transistor by introducing one phosphorous atom into a silicon lattice. Through the use of a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) and hydrogen-resist lithography, Martin Fuechsle et al. placed the phosphorous atom precisely between very thin silicon leads, allowing them to measure its electrical behavior. The results show clearly that we can read both the quantum transitions within the phosphorous atom and its transistor behavior. No smaller solid-state devices are possible, so systems of this type reveal the limit of Moore’s law—the prediction about the miniaturization of technology—while pointing toward solid-state quantum computing devices.

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from Ars Technica