Hasta La Gadget!

We’ll be straight up with you — there’s a lot of fancy work going on with this one that laypeople will have a tough time grasping, but the long and short of it is this: a team from Rice University (Krishna Palem pictured) and Nanyang Technological University have created a microchip that “uses 30 times less electricity while running seven times faster than today’s best technology.” Already crying snake oil? Not so fast. By trashing the traditional set of mathematical rules (that’d be Boolean logic) and instead applying probabilistic logic, researchers have figured out how to deliver similar results with a fraction of the energy. The tech is being dubbed PCMOS (probabilistic CMOS), and could eventually end up in embedded systems and even cellphones. In the case of the latter, this type of chip will be able to display streaming video on a minuscule display with more artifacts than usual, but due to the small screen size and the human brain’s ability to piece together nearly-perfect images, the errors involved would be all but forgotten. Meanwhile, your battery bar would still be nearly full. We always heard there was beauty in imperfections — now, at long last, we finally get it.

Filed under: Desktops, Misc. Gadgets, Laptops

Probabilistic logic makes microchip more energy efficient originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Pretty big talk, Creative, for such a mysterious product. According to information gleaned from an email that’s making the rounds, Zii is “revolutionary” — in fact, it’s about to change everything you know. Everything. The company says they’ve invested over 10 years, over one billion dollars, and 10,000 man-years (that’s a lot of men! and years!) on “stem cell-like silicon that is able to grow and multiply into different solutions and ecosystems,” which will “better lives beyond our imagination.” Has your mind been blown yet? No? Just wait until you “discover incredible recession-friendly business opportunities that enable you to thrive and prosper.” Just what we need in the midst of these turbulent times. Of course this begs us to ask the question: if life as we know it is over, couldn’t they have spent a little time coming up with a name other than Zii? And might there be a better place to announce this epoch-making discovery than booth #30651 at CES?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Creative sheds some hype on Zii ‘stem cell computing’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments