"MATERIALS: Thermoelectrics cool night vision goggles"

Infrared night vision goggles used by the U.S. military are limited by thermally-generated noise in indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) infrared sensors. Nextreme Thermal Solutions Inc. (Durham, N.C.) and infrared sensor maker Princeton Lightwave Inc. (PLI, Cranbury, N..J.) have used thermal bump technology to cool a short-wave infrared InGaAs focal plane array thereby clarifying its images. Unlike current sensors, PLI's focal plane array utilizes the 1.6-micron wavelength, which enables the use of laser illuminators that are invisible to current night vision goggles.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208402776

"SLIDESHOW: Week-in-Review, June 6, 2008"

View a slideshow version of this week's top technology stories, which include how IBM water cools 3D chip stacks, how a foundry is offering nanotube-chip fabrication, how quantum measurements could cool chips, how Dolby Volume levels consumer devices, and how Taiwan is set to go WiMAX.
Slideshow: http://www.eetimes.com/galleries/slideShow.jhtml?galleryID=25

"PODCAST: Week-in-Review, June 6, 2008"

Here I review the week's tops stories as compiled from interviews I do for EETimes. This week our top stories include how to water cool 3D chip stacks, how a foundry is offering nanotube-chip fabrication, how quantum measurements could cool chips, how Dolby Volume levels consumer devices, and how Taiwan is set to go WiMAX. Also get a summary of this week's MEMS Ahead blog and a sneak preview of this weekend's Bourne report.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/podcast

"CHIPS: IBM water cools 3D chip stacks"

IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory demonstrated three-dimensional chip stacks that are cooled with water, which the company expects to commercialize for its multicore servers. By stacking memory chips between processor cores they can multiply interconnections by 100 times while reducing their feature size tenfold. To cool the stack at a rate of 180 watts per layer, water flows down 50-micron channels between the stacked chips. Earlier this year, the same group described the water cooling method for IBM's Hydro-Cluster supercomputer. The Zurich team predicts high-end IBM multicore computers will migrate from the copper-plate water-cooling-method to the 3-D chip-stack in five to 10 years.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208402316

"WIRELESS: WiMax field trials set for Taiwan"

Global Mobile Corp. of Taipei announced that it plans to begin WiMax field trials in Taiwan. Along with partner NextWave Wireless Inc. (San Diego), Global Mobile's Taiwan WiMax network will offer a service called MXtv, with up to 40 live-broadcast channels, as well as with interactive media services, digital audio, video conferencing, and voice-over-IP. WiMax subscribers in Taiwan would communicate with cell towers using NextWave's V5 basestations and gateway platform running software provided by PacketVideo, a NextWave subsidiary delivering 3G mobile TV in Europe.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208402096

"QUANTUM: Measuring could yield new chip-cooling scheme"

Scientists take great pains not to disturb the coherence of quantum states through constant measurements. Israeli and German scientists recently collaborated to turn this technique on its head, using the measurement of quantum states to control thermodynamics (temperature) and entropy (settling). The scientists claim that in two-level quantum systems--like those used to represent quantum bits (q-bits)--the frequency with which they are measured controls both temperature and entropy. The approach could enable novel cooling schemes as well as instant-settling for atomic, molecular and solid-state devices. Both cooling and state purification, they claim, can be made to occur much more quickly than the normal time typically needed to achieve thermal equilibrium for cooling or feedback around a control loop for purification.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208401760

"ALGORITHMS: Dolby Volume turns up on Symphony DSPs"

Banking on Dolby Volume's becoming as common as Dolby Digital surround sound, Freescale Semiconductor Inc. has built the technology into its entire line of Symphony digital signal processors (DSPs). Dolby Volume turns up quiet programs, muffles loud advertisements and generally equalizes sound levels among different audio sources, such as DVD and TV. Earlier this year, Cirrus Logic Inc. (Austin) introduced an audio DSP with Dolby Volume sound-leveling technology, but only for stereo digital TV applications. Freescale's DSPs implement both stereo DTV and full multispeaker surround sound systems for home theaters.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208401243

"NANOTECH: Nanotube fab gears up for production"

Carbon nanotube chips appear ready for commercialization, claims the first foundry offering carbon nanotube thin films to fabless chip makers. Nantero Inc. (Woburn, Mass.) partnered with SVTC Technologies (Austin, Texas) to offer the first eight-inch nanotube thin-film development foundry. SVTC uses Natero's process to prototype commercial CMOS carbon nanotube designs for fabless chip houses. SVTC said its first customer is prototyping a carbon nanotube-based random-access memory (NRAM). Nantero claims NRAMs could be up to 20 times denser than current flash memories using 22-nm square bit cells compared to 100-nm cells for current 16-Gbit flash memories. That's a whopping 320-Gbit/chip densities for NRAM using current lithography. Using next generation lithography, Nantero claims nanotube thin films could ultimately be capable of terabit-per-chip capacities by squeezing bit cells down to as small as 5-nm square. Besides NRAMs, carbon nanotube films are good candidates for applications like interconnection layers below the 45-nm process node where carbon nanotube thin films may outperform copper interconnects. The films also could be used to make cheap, durable touch screens, replacing indium tin oxide in flat panels for electron-field-emission displays. Other proposed applications include paper-thin batteries, super-efficient solar cells and for ultra-sensitive sensors.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208401380