03/26, 12:10pm
Graphene to bump silicon
A recent report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is naming Graphene, a form of pure carbon founded in 2004 that could be applied to microchips to make for faster processing speeds than is possible with current silicon chips. Researchers outside of MIT have created prototype transistors and similar simple devices using one-atom thick Graphene, but the newer MIT findings could make for more advanced applications. The researchers built an experimental Graphene chip that acts as a frequency multiplier, capable of doubling the frequency of an electromagnetic signal, or effectively doubling a CPU's clock speed.
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03/11, 4:00pm
MIT Fast Recharge Battery
MIT scientists led by professor Gerbrand Ceder today said they have developed a new improvement on lithium-ion battery packs that could potentially eliminate the need for long recharge times or, in some cases, for larger batteries. By applying a coating of lithium phosphate to an existing battery design, the researchers steer the ions more directly to the "tunnels" leading to the battery terminal and thus supply a charge much faster than the more passive approach used today.
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02/26, 1:15pm
iPhones for freshmen
Abilene Christian University will be delivering an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch to all members of its incoming class in 2008. Freshmen will use the iPhones or iPod Touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors' offices, and check their meal and account balances - "among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed," said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts. Roberts was asked to present ACU's creative vision for converged media devices at Apple headquarters to executives and to selected leaders from universities including Harvard, Yale, MIT, Duke, Stanford, Oxford, Princeton and UCLA.
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02/06, 12:20pm
Ultra-efficient MIT chip
Researchers have developed a new technology, being demonstrated this week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, which is said to dramatically improve the battery life of cellphones and other portable electronics. MIT and Texas Instruments claim they have developed a new chip design which is up to 10 times as efficient as current ones, thanks mainly to a DC-to-DC converter which helps reduce necessary voltage. Where many chips need 1V of power, Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan of MIT notes that testing at his university has a chip running at 0.3V.
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