La china Hon Hai Precision Industry, más conocida como Foxconn, ha recibido el visto bueno de la autoridad china antimonopolio para formalizar el acuerdo alcanzado con Sharp para adquirir el 66% de las acciones de la compañía japonesa, en la primera operación de la historia de Japón en la que una empresa nacional es comprada por una firma extranjera.
Researchers at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have proposed a new tunnel transistor based on bilayer graphene that could reduce its power consumption, allowing a significant increase in processors’ clock speeds. In their simulations, the MIPT researchers calculated that the clock speed could be increased by as much as two orders of magnitude.
Mobile apps, video games, spreadsheets, and accurate weather forecasts: that’s just a sampling of the life-changing things made possible by the reliable, exponential growth in the power of computer chips over the past five decades.
But in a few years technology companies may have to work harder to bring us advanced new use cases for computers. The continual cramming of more silicon transistors onto chips, known as Moore’s Law, has been the feedstock of exuberant innovation in computing. But it looks to be slowing to a halt.
Neural networks are artificial intelligence systems that excel at interpreting images. This makes them promising for helping drones and robots navigate, or for analyzing surveillance footage. But they are typically power hungry, which has limited their use so far. Vision processor company Movidius of San Mateo, Calif., hopes to change that with a low-power chip designed to run neural networks. The neural net accelerator, called Fathom, comes on a USB stick, uses only 1 watt of power, and can run most visual neural nets.
It is easy to take for granted the advancements in our mobile phones, wearable electronics, and other gadgets. But advances in computing rely on processes that the semiconductor industry cannot take for granted. Moore’s Law, which says that computing power will double every two years, is already slowing (see “Intel Puts the Brakes on Moore’s Law”).
Chip maker Intel has signaled a slowing of Moore’s Law, a technological phenomenon that has played a role in just about every major advance in engineering and technology for decades.
Since the 1970s, Intel has released chips that fit twice as many transistors into the same space roughly every two years, aiming to follow an exponential curve named after Gordon Moore, one of the company’s cofounders. That continual shrinking has helped make computers more powerful, compact, and energy-efficient. It has helped bring us smartphones, powerful Internet services, and breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence and genetics. And Moore’s Law has become shorthand for the idea that anything involving computing gets more capable over time.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched the Raspberry Pi 3, a third-generation model of the popular Raspberry Pi mini computer.
Priced at $35, the Raspberry Pi 3 boasts many of the same features as its predecessor, including HDMI, ethernet, and 4 USB ports. But the latest incarnation also lays out the red carpet for built-in wireless support, Bluetooth 4.0, and a faster 1.2GHz, 64-bit, quad-core ARMv8 processor. The Raspberry Pi 3 goes on sale for the same price as the Pi 2, so deciding which device to opt for is a no-brainer .
Chipmaker Qualcomm is preparing to lay off several thousand employees, or more than 10 percent of its 30,000-strong workforce, the Information website reported on Monday.
The chipmaker is expected to announce the job cuts when it releases its quarterly results on Wednesday, the tech website reported, citing people inside and outside of the company.
Qualcomm, which reported a 46 percent drop in second-quarter profit in April, is facing increasing competition from Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc and a handful of small Chinese companies that specialize in making chips for low-priced phones.
The target units for the job cuts could not be identified, the website said.
