Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re at all familiar with mobile processors, you’ve likely heard a lot about 32nm vs. 28nm construction when comparing the current generation of chips from companies like Qualcomm and others. That refers to the size of the processor, where a smaller number is better in terms of power consumption, fitting more transistors in less space for more efficient processing.

Currently, it’s hard to get past around the 20nm when creating individual patterns for data storage on today’s disk drives, which is another area in addition to processors where Moore’s Law applies. Today though, HGST, a Western Digital Company, announced a breakthrough that allows it to produce patterns as small as 10nm, via a process called “nanolithography,” meaning that it can essentially double the current maximum storage capacity possible in hard disk drives, given the same-sized final product.

HGST’s process, which was developed in tandem with Austin, Texas-based silicon startup Molecular Imprints, Inc. doesn’t use the current prevailing photolithography tech, which is limited in how small it can go by the size of light wavelengths, which is what allows it to get to the 10nm threshold, and hopefully beyond even that in time, HGST VP of Research Currie Munce told me in an interview.

The upshot of all this is that HGST hopes to have the process ready for wide-scale commercial production by the end of the current decade, with a process that makes the resulting storage both affordable and dependable enough to be used widely by customers who need ever-increasing amounts of storage. The number of customers who fit that description is increasing rapidly, too: the advent and growth in popularity of cloud services means that big companies like Facebook, Apple and Amazon are continually building and expanding new data centers in search of greater storage capacity. HGST’s nanolithography process could double the storage capacity per square foot at any of those facilities, without having the same effect on power requirements, which is clearly an attractive proposition.

While the process looks well-suited to disk-based storage, where redundancies and workaround can account for minor imperfections at the microscopic level, Munce says that HGST nanolithography is less well-suited to the task of creating mobile processors for smartphone like those mentioned above.

“If you don’t connect the circuits properly on a processor it doesn’t work at all,” he explained. “On a hard disk drive, we can always have error connecting codes, we can always use additional signal processing to cover up a few defects in the pattern that’s created.”

Still, for HDDs and computer memory (RAM), HGST’s breakthrough could have a massive impact on cloud computing, mobile devices and the tech industry as a whole, and all within the next five to six years.

NMR and MRI technology has received a large boost, thanks to work by two groups that have developed a method to image individual molecules using nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging. Instead of using nanomagnets, which require extremely cold temperatures, a large drawback, the researchers achieved this with defective diamonds.

The project is underway by two teams, one led by a University of Stuttgart physicist named Friedemann Reinhard, and the other by the Manager of Nanoscale Studies at Almaden Research Center Daniel Rugar. Reinhard is quoted as saying that he wants to “push NMR and MRI to the molecular level.”

The problem up until this point with using NMR and MRI to image molecules has been detector size, which has to be near the size of the sample being imaged. Obviously, magnetic coils small enough to image molecules are hard to come by. To solve this problem, the teams made defective diamonds that contain one nitrogen atom beside a missing carbon atom.

By doing this, the diamond has a red glow, which changes in intensity based on the direction of the spinning electrons. The researchers then place different samples on the defective diamond and monitor the influence of nuclear resonance. Most of the time, this produced a signal from volumes only 5 nanometers long, small enough to get details from individual molecules. For now, the method is passive in nature, but Reinhard stated that the teams want to transform from detection to imaging as the next step.

[via Nature]

Defective diamonds allow MRIs to image individual molecules is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Liquid metal technology. That’s Terminator 2 stuff, right? Well you better start running now, John Connor, because it’s here. A new, flexible, conductive nano-coating lets liquid metal keep its form by transforming under high pressure, and then springing right back. More »

We’re sure that most sniffer dogs would rather be playing fetch than hunting for bombs in luggage. If UC Santa Barbara has its way with a new sensor, those canines will have a lot more free time on their hands. The device manages a snout-like sensitivity by concentrating molecules in microfluidic channels whose nanoparticles boost any spectral signatures when they’re hit by a laser spectrometer. Although the main technology fits into a small chip, it can detect vapors from explosives and other materials at a level of one part per billion or better; that’s enough to put those pups out of work. To that end, the university is very much bent on commercializing its efforts and has already licensed the method to SpectraFluidics. We may see the technology first on the battlefield when the research involves funding from DARPA and the US Army, but it’s no big stretch to imagine the sensor checking for drugs and explosives at the airport — without ever needing a kibble break.

Continue reading UCSB sensor sniffs explosives through microfluidics, might replace Rover at the airport (video)

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Via: Gizmag

Source: UCSB

IBM has reported that they’re making great strides on developing a new technology that will continue to make chips smaller, while also making them continually faster at the same time. Using carbon nanotubes, IBM scientists have been able to build hybrid chips with more than 10,000 working transistors.

It’s said that the point in time when technology will reach a plateau as far as getting smaller and faster will come at some point, meaning that Moore’s Law won’t last forever. Even though Moore’s Law has lasted almost a half-century so far, it’s said to only be around until around 2020, give or take a few years.

If you’re not familiar with Moore’s Law, it’s basically an observation of sorts where the number of transistors that can fit onto an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and was coined by computer scientist and former Caltech professor Carver Mead.

IBM’s carbon nanotube discovery is huge, especially considering that chip makers have not yet found ways to improve chips beyond the next two or three generations. Not only will carbon nanotubes allow chip makers to build smaller transistors, but they’ll be able to increase the speed at which those transistors can be turned on and off. However, it’s not said when the new technology will be ready, but it most likely won’t be for a few more years at least, since it’s still in its early development stages.

[via New York Times]

Image via Flickr

IBM claims chip breakthrough using carbon nanotubes is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.