#ALGORITHMS: "Aquifi Gesture Interface Uses Built-in Cameras"

The inventors of the gesture recognition chip used in Microsoft's latest Kinect have found a way to do it with software alone. They promise to be licensing to OEMs by year's end: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Aquifi runs on the users' device tracking face, hand, and fingers with the help of smart gesture recognition apps running in the cloud.

Instead of using touch to manage a GPS map display while driving, Fluid Experience Technology tracks your eyes to automatically center where you are looking on the screen.

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#CHIPS: "China Leads in Carbon-based Semiconductors"

If the next generation of semiconductors are carbon-based instead of silicon-based, then China may become the world leader in semiconductors. R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

China's many carbon nanotube research and manufacturing players shown here have taken the lead worldwide in patents and published papers.

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#3D: "IBM Debuts Microscopic 3D Printer"

A microscopic 3D printer enables chip designers to quickly prototype new semiconductors structures as well as create light guides for photonics and quantum computers. R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

IBM microscopic 3D printer works like an atomic force microscope (AFM) with a heated tip that can sculpt with nanometer resolution.

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#ENERGY: "Ultracapacitor Breakthrough Beats Batteries"

Ultracapacitors are redefining power applications--replacing batteries or improving their utilization--for a wide variety of applications. This carbon nanotube/graphene version could expand the spectrum of applications even further. R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

SEM image details the ultracapacitor's composite film combining graphene flakes and single-walled carbon nanotubes.

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#EDA: Cadence Design Systems Acquires Jasper Design Automation"

Cadence has lagged behind in formal verification tools, which it plans to remedy by acquiring the JasperGold Apps suite. Cadence will integrate Jasper's formal analysis toolkit into the Cadence System Development Suite to create the most comprehensive set of verification tools available today, according to the companies: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

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#CHIPS: "Neuromorphic Roadmap Plots Analog Path"

This roadmap cites Carver Mead's original plea to truly emulate biology with analog rather than merely simulate with digital. By emulating the continuous analog functions of the human nervous system, rather than just simulate them with step-time digital functions, you not only save power, but realize synergy among neuromorphic subsystems that cannot be simulated with digital circuitry alone: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Georgia Tech professor Jennifer Hasler (left) and doctoral candidate Suma George (right) display boards using their field-programmable gate array (FGAA) SoC.

Field programmable analog array (FPAA, center, right) developed at Georgia Tech as a power-efficient, mixed-signal SoC for true neuromorphic emulations of the brain.

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#ENERGY: "Quantum Dots Enable Windows to Harvest Solar Energy"

The windows of the future could double as solar energy concentrators according to researchers at Los Alamos Natl. Lab which recently demonstrated a prototype: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Transparent quantum-dot-impregnated window panes luminescence under ultraviolet illumination.

Solar energy is collected by cadmium-selenium (CdSe) quantum dots which pass the energy to a cadmium-sulfur (CdS) inner cores which emits the light at a different wavelength thus concentrating the solar energy from the whole windows surface on the phovoltaic cells around the window's edge.

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#NANOTECHNOLOGY: "IBM Adds Photonics to Silicon with III-V Nanowires"

A new era of semiconductors is being proposed by IBM by combining III-V nanowires like gallium arsenide (GaAs) to traditional silicon CMOS circuitry. R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

IBM adds a strained gallium arsenide nanowire (orange) to provide optical capabilities to silicon chips.

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#CHIPS: "Archer Supercomputer Advancing State-of-the-Art"

Cray scored a major design win with its massively parallel XC30 supercomputer is the fastest in the U.K. for complex simulations--from cosmology to climate modeling to aircraft design--using Intel E5 processor chips and Aries interconnection fabric chips--R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

The University of Edinburgh recently installed its Archer supercomputer, which ranks as the fastest supercomputer in England.

Cray XC30 series chassis are based on blades with processor daughter cards (PDCs) and a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) Gen3 host interface.

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#CHIPS: ISPD-14 "Looks Beyond FinFETs to Secure ICs"

The future of chip design is foretold at the International Symposium of Physical Design. See into the future of ICs in this report on ISPD14. Revealed are the process technologies that will obsolete FinFETs, Understand how to purge counterfeit chips and secure the supply chain, then explore the bright future of cyber-physical systems--R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Look beyond FinFETs to the process technologies that will replace them.

Mentor Graphics shows how to secure the supply chain even though a major part of it is untrusted.

Ninety percent of all future innovations for cars will be on their electronics systems.
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#STANDARDS: "NIST Sets New World Record in Accuracy of Atomic Clocks"

As if losing or gaining a second every 100 million years wasn't accurate enough, NIST has not upped the ante to 300 million years and has sights on 3 Billion year atomic clocks! R. Colin Johnson

NISTs new atomic clock is three times as accurate as the previous model that has been the universal standard since 1999.St
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#MEMS: Tiny Mics to Pass $1B Market Milestone

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) microphones combine tiny size with high-definition sound, superior signal-to-noise ratios and wider dynamic range that conventional microphones. They have already become standard faire for mobile devices and in 2014 will pass the $1 billion dollar market milestone, shipping over 2.4 billion units worldwide.

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