Skip navigation

community

Up to Blog Posts in News

News

2 Posts tagged with the atom tag
Cabe Atwell
2

Rosepoint3_p.jpg

Rosepoint chip (via Intel)

 

‘Fused’ chips are fast becoming the status quo in powering today’s mobile devices, particularly tablets and smartphones. For those of you who don’t know what fused chips are, they combine CPU’s and  For those of you who don’t know what fused chips are, they combine CPU’s and GPU’s on a single chip (or die) such as AMD’s Fusion. Intel has recently stepped up their game in this field with the introduction of their Sandy Bridge line of fused chips, but they have not stopped the integration there.

 

 

The company has recently stated that they have combined Wi-Fi with their line of Atom processors code named Rosepoint which will be unveiled at this year’s International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. Not much is known about Rosepoint but a few ‘leaked’ images and a vague Intel press release. Details say that it features a 32nm SoC with a built-in Wi-Fi transceiver (running at a reported 2.4 GHz or 4G) with two Atom CPU’s all crammed onto the same die. Another goal is to reduce the chip-count. Although a wireless transmitter that close to other digital signals would cause interference, Intel has found some "hush-hush" way to shield the CPU from the WiFi onboard. The integration of wireless onto CPU cores means less power usage as well as costs. If all goes well, the technology could be found in mobile devices as early as 2013.

 

 

More information will be released at this year’s ISSCC so check back for an update! (ISSCC runs from February 19-23rd.)

 

Cabe

http://twitter.com/Cabe_e14

363 Views 2 Comments Permalink Tags: wireless, design, wifi, intel, communication, 4g, industry, innovation, prototyping, research, cpu, atom, gpu, cabeatwell
Cabe Atwell
0

 

Memory storing devices will surely continue their trend of shrinking, keeping with Moore's law as always. However, scientists at IBM have found a method for storing information inside of just a handful of atoms, I wonder if the law could still apply even at this scale.

 

 

Andreas Heinrich, an IBM researcher, has found that 12 atoms are sufficient to hold the information for one bit (a 0 or a 1), the smallest unit of memory storage needed by computer systems. Since 8 bits are needed to form a byte, 96 atoms could do the job that is currently done by millions of atoms in a modern hard disc drive. This means a byte is 100 times more dense than a current byte.


The effect that allows storage is called antiferromagnetism. Adjacent iron atoms are made to spin oppositely to each other, and this opposing spin negates the external magnetic field around the group of atoms. Heinrich found that less than 12 atoms were too unstable to maintain spin and store memory.


Heinrich achieved this using a scanning tunneling microscope in conditions near absolute zero. He admits that part of the challenge lies in developing a device that uses this type of atomic memory storage at room temperature where atoms vibrate much faster.  This type of memory storage could prove to be vital for nano-mechanical systems to work efficiently. 

 

 

Cabe

http://twitter.com/Cabe_e14

168 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: design, test, innovation, prototyping, research, hmi, atom, spintronics, cabeatwell, atomic_energy_storage, atomic_spin