University of Pennsylvania March 21, 2019 Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have introduced a metamaterial platform capable of solving an arbitrary wave as the input function to an equation associated with a prescribed integral operator. The solution of such an equation is generated as a complex-valued output electromagnetic field. They demonstrated their technique at microwave frequencies through solving a generic integral equation and using a set of waveguides as the input and output to the designed metastructures. The research provides a route to develop chip-based analog optical computers and computing elements…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Tag Archives: Computing
Excitons pave the way to more efficient electronics
Nanowerk January 4, 2019 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Japan) combined tungsten diselenide with molybdenum diselenide to reveal new properties with an array of possible high-tech. By using a laser to generate light beams and slightly shifting the positions of the two 2D materials to create a moiré pattern, they were able to use excitons to change and regulate the polarization, wavelength and intensity of light. By manipulating the “valley,” of the exiciton, it can be leveraged to code and process information at a nanoscopic level. Linking several devices that incorporate this technology would give us a new way […]
New version of memory could power AI phones, smart devices
Nanowerk December 31, 2018 The new version of phase-change memory developed by an international team of researchers (Singapore, UK) reduces the switching time and allows memory cells to produce excellent stability. The manufacturing procedure uses a normal voltage pulse and requires no additional special materials. They reduced the switching time to 400 picoseconds by creating a single high amplitude voltage pulse and moderate duration to produce favorable atomic rearrangement in a material…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
A catalytic flying carpet
Nanowerk January 2, 2019 Catalyst-coated, hard particles can spontaneously generate fluid flows, which, in turn, propel the particles through the fluid. If it were a deformable sheet, then the self-generated flows could affect not only the sheet’s motion but also its shape. Researchers at Pittsburgh University developed models that capture the interrelated chemical, hydrodynamic, and mechanical interactions to uncover novel behavior emerging from the previously unstudied coupling between active, soft sheets and the surrounding fluid. The sheets can be tailored by modifying the sheet’s geometry, patterning the sheet’s surface with different catalysts, and using cascades of chemical reactions. The layers […]
An Amoeba Just Found an Entirely New Way to Solve a Classic Computing Problem
Science Alert December 21, 2018 An international team of researchers (China, Japan) used a unicellular plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum to search for a solution to the travelling salesman problem (TSP) by changing its shape to minimize the risk of being exposed to aversive light stimuli. They found that the time taken by plasmodium to find a reasonably high-quality TSP solution grows linearly as the problem size increases from four to eight. The quality of the solution does not degrade despite the explosive expansion of the search space. They formulated a computational model to show that the linear-time solution can be […]
Computational intelligence-inspired clustering in multi-access vehicular networks
Phys.org June 28, 2018 Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have attracted great interest for improving communications between vehicles using infrastructure-less wireless technologies. To overcome the shortcomings of the VANETs, an international team of researchers (Japan, Finland) has proposed a two-level clustering approach where cluster head nodes in the first level try to reduce the MAC layer contentions for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, and cluster head nodes in the second level are responsible for providing a gateway functionality between V2V and LTE. Simulation results under various Network conditions show that the proposed protocol can achieve 23% throughput improvement in high-density scenarios compared […]
‘Breakthrough’ algorithm exponentially faster than any previous one
Eurekalert June 28, 2018 Traditionally algorithms for optimization problems narrow down the search space for the best solution one step at a time. In contrast, the new algorithm developed by researchers at Harvard University samples a variety of directions in parallel. Based on that sample, the algorithm discards low-value directions from its search space and chooses the most valuable directions to progress towards a solution. Using a data set of two million taxi trips from the New York City taxi and limousine commission, the adaptive-sampling algorithm found solutions 6 times faster. One of the biggest challenges in machine learning is […]
Researchers create world’s smallest ‘computer’
Tech Explore June 23, 2018 Researchers at the University of Michigan have created a device that measures just 0.3 mm to a side. It is designed as a precision temperature sensor that converts temperatures into time intervals, defined with electronic pulses. Microdevices, from IBM and now Michigan, lose all prior programming and data as soon as they lose power. In addition to the RAM and photovoltaics, the new computing devices have processors and wireless transmitters and receivers. Because they are too small to have conventional radio antennae, they receive and transmit data with visible light. A base station provides light […]
Computing: Design for magnetoelectric device may improve memory
Science Daily May 4, 2018 Existing devices require large magnetic and electric fields to switch the magnetic properties of the devices. Researchers at the University of Minnesota used the magnetic material to surround chromia (Cr2O3) providing a magnetic field through quantum mechanical coupling to Cr magnetic moments, while allowing devices to be arranged in a way that blocks stray magnetic fields from affecting nearby devices. An element to read out the state of the device is placed on top of the device. This could potentially pack more memory into a smaller space… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE