Hasta La Gadget!

Tired of the year wait (or more) in between new silicon architecture offerings from Chipzilla and AMD? Well, if some Wolfpack researchers have anything to say about it, we’ll measure that wait in months thanks to a new CPU core design tool that automates part of the process. Creating a new CPU core is, on a high level, a two step procedure. First, the architectural specification is created, which sets the core’s dimensions and arranges its components. That requires some heavy intellectual lifting, and involves teams of engineers to complete. Previously, similar manpower was needed for the second step, where the architecture spec is translated into an implementation design that can be fabricated in a factory. No longer. The aforementioned NC State boffins have come up with a tool that allows engineers to input their architecture specification, and it generates an implementation design that’s used to draw up manufacturing blueprints. The result? Considerable time and manpower savings in creating newly designed CPU cores, which means that all those leaked roadmaps we’re so fond of could be in serious need of revision sometime soon.

Researchers partially automate CPU core design, aim to fast track new PC processor production originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 07:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Computers are normally limited by the fixed nature of their chipsets: once the silicon is out of the factory, its capabilities are forever locked in. The City College of New York and University of California Berkeley have jointly developed a technique that could break chips free of these prisons and speed along quantum computing. They found that hitting gallium arsenide with a laser light pattern aligns the spins of the atoms under the rays, creating a spintronic circuit that can re-map at a moment’s notice. The laser could be vital to quantum computers, which can depend heavily or exclusively on spintronics to work: a simple shine could get electrons storing a much wider range of numbers and consequently handling many more calculations at once. Research is only just now becoming public, however; even though gallium arsenide is common in modern technology, we’ll need to be patient before we find quantum PCs at the local big-box retail chain. Despite this, we could still be looking at an early step in a shift from computers with many single-purpose components to the abstracted, all-powerful quantum machines we’ve held in our science fiction dreams.

CCNY, UC Berkeley develop lasers that could rewrite quantum chips, spin those atoms right round originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 04:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It only took 16,000 computer processors to do it, but over the span of just a few years a group of Google scientists were able to simulate how the human brain identifies things they find on the Internet. More specifically, the neural network was able to train itself to recognize cats. The way it was able to recognize them actually reflected biological theories where objects are identified by trained individual neurons in the brain.

After being exposed to a few million digital images of cats from videos on YouTube, the neural network tapped into its memory of what it extracted and learned from the images before putting together its own image of a cat. Like humans, it was able to understand the general features of the cat through repeated exposure to the images.

While an actual human’s ability to identify cats on the Internet is not exactly impressive by any means, Google’s simulation experiment suggests that machine advancements are getting that much closer to human-like functions, and are leading to machines being able to better visibly see and perceive things, understand human speech and translate languages.

[via New York Times]

Google has a neural network that can recognize objects is written by Elise Moreau & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Stress breeds depression. Anecdotally, we all know that’s the case, but scientifically speaking it’s been a hypothesis that has until now remained unproven. A new study, however, reveals that chronic stress affects us at the genetic level, in turn creating very real brain changes associated with depression. More »

SpaceX has announced a successful test of its new rocket engine. The new engine is dubbed the Merlin 1D. The company bills the rocket engine as the most efficient booster engine ever built. The engine was able to produce a massive 147,000 pounds of thrust in a stationary position.

The rocket engine demonstrated the ability to achieve “the full duration and power required for a Falcon 9 rocket launch.” The successful test clears the way for the engine to continue development with the goal of being deployed in the real world at some point in 2013. The new engine uses fewer parts and more robotic construction techniques than the older engine.

The older engine SpaceX used was part of the successful mission to the ISS recently. SpaceX was kind enough to record the test so we can watch the flaming glory and the future of the company’s private space program. The test lasted 185 seconds.

[via The Verge]

SpaceX tests new rocket engine is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.