#MEMS: "Built-in MEMS resonators beat quartz"

Quartz resonators are a multi-billion dollar market that SiTime hopes to crack with its new micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) resonator which it says have equal performance at a fraction of the size. Look for MEMS resonators to start eroding quartz crystals over the next three years. R. Colin Johnson, Kyoto Prize Fellow @NextGenLog


SiTime's novel MEMS resonator can be wirebonded to any CMOS die inside its package to eliminate external quartz crystals.

Here is what my story in EETimes says about MEMS resonators: Micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) resonators can now be integrated inside a semiconductor vendor's own plastic packages, eliminating the need for an external time base like a quartz crystal for real-time clocks. The world's first MEMS resonator for real-time clocks is being offered as a bare-die to CMOS chip makers by SiTime Corp...
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#CHIPS: "NIST aims quartz microbalance at nanotech"

Nanotechnology is challenging our traditional metrological techniques for measuring the purity of a compound, but the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) thinks they have an answer. Look for NIST's new metrological regime to be widely adopted among semiconductor researchers and manufacturers. R. Colin Johnson, Kyoto Prize Fellow @NextGenLog


NIST prepares quartz crystal microbalance disks with samples of carbon nanotubes for microscale thermogravimetric analysis with sample sizes as small as one microgram. Credit: Kar/NIST.

Here is what my story in EETimes says about MEMS resonators: Using a new twist on the traditional thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) technique, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) demonstrated a new method for taking Nanoscale measurements of the purity of carbon-nanotubes, coated-nanoparticles and surface features on thin films. NIST demonstrated its new TGA microbalance built atop a vibrating quartz crystal, thereby enabling measurements almost 1000-times more sensitive than today...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-gEYS

#OPTICAL: "CMOS optical pulse compressor debuts"

In the future, all CMOS chips will communicate by modulating beams of light that silicon waveguides are routing around, between and among semiconductor chips and the systems using them. The pulse compressor demonstrated here is one more component for future engineers to use when designing CMOS optical interconnects. R. Colin Johnson, Kyoto Prize Fellow @NextGenLog


Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of dispersive grating for generating short, pulses of light for optical interconnects.
Credit: UC San Diego / Dawn Tan.

Here is what my story in EETimes says about MEMS resonators: Silicon photonic pulse compressors were demonstrated on CMOS chips recently by researchers at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). To be used for optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) in future on-chip silicon photonics, the pulse compressor design used a dispersive optical grating to generate short, powerful communications pulses on a CMOS chip. UCSD claimed its pulse compressor is the first CMOS implementation strong enough for OTDM...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-ePGF

#ALGORITHMS: "Microsoft Opens Windows to Cloud Computing"

Azure has five main parts: Compute, Storage, the Fabric Controller, Content Delivery Network and Connect.

Amazon may still have the largest cloud computing platform, but Microsoft's Azure is growing more quickly, signing up major accounts, and giving scientists and researchers free access just for switching from Linux to Windows. Look for a massive brain drain from Linux to Windows while the free offer is in effect, then the door slamming shut in about 18 months when Microsoft figures they've gotten enough programmers to switch and starts charging--just a little at first. R. Colin Johnson, Kyoto Prize Fellow @ NextGenLog


Azure applications run in Microsoft data centers and are accessed via the Internet.

Here is what my story in Smarter Technology says about MEMS resonators: Microsoft is making a major effort to reinvent itself as a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS), promising to shift the majority of its engineering efforts away from PC-centric computing to cloud computing—turning its popular Windows platform into a smart terminal for its online applications and storage regimes in the cloud called Azure...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-h4wu

#KYOTO-PRIZE: "Kyoto Prize Winner Revolutionizing IT Network Design"

Three Kyoto Prizes were awarded this year to Shinya Yamanaka for a stem cell breakthrough, Laszlo Lovasz for his algorithms and William Kentridge for his "drawings in motion" (left to right).

Today IT managers need to buy time on a supercomputer to run an accurate simulation of a large network, but Kyoto Prize winner Laszlo Lavasz wants to enable even large complex networks to be simulated on PC-sized models. Look for Lovasz' new algorithm next year when he will be a resident scholar at Princeton University. R. Colin Johnson, Kyoto Prize Fellow @NextGenLog


Ceremonial globes were presented by Japanese children to Kyoto Prize winners, Kentridge, Lovasz and Yamanaka during the ceremony.

Here is what my story at Smarter Technology says about the Kyoto Prize: Tools for accurately modeling very large networks—from server farms to wireless sensor nets—are being enabled by the pioneering mathematical tools of this year's Kyoto Prize winner, Laszlo Lovasz. Half-million dollar awards were also made to stem-cell innovator Shinya Yamanaka and artistic groundbreaker William Kentridge. The Kyoto Prize—which has for 25 years aimed to rival the Nobel Prize—this year bestows three $550,000 awards to Laszlo Lovasz for his contributions to information technology (IT); Shinya Yamanaka for discovering that skin, instead of embryos, can be regressed into stem cells; and William Kentridge for his artistic invention called "drawings in motion."
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#MARKETS: "3 Reasons Tech Recovery Is Stalling"

Global semiconductor revenue in 2011 will likely grow only about 5 percent, compared with 30 percent in 2010, muting expectations for the rest of the IT sector. Analysts' reasons for this trend are threefold: stubborn unemployment, tight credit availability and the lack of recovery in the housing market. Look for continued steady growth, but at a more sustainable pace or five to seven percent for the next five years. R. Colin Johnson, Kyoto Prize Fellow @NextGenLog


Tech sector rebound in 2010 has already regained the lost ground from the 2008 recession, but growth rate will cool to a sustainable 5 percent until 2014.

Here is what my Smarter Technology story says about the recovery: Market analysts at iSuppli Corp. (El Segundo, Calif.) recently predicted that the spectacular semiconductor market recovery in 2010 was cooling, on track for a modest 5.1 percent gain in 2011, compared with the meteoric 32 percent increase predicted for 2010. The reasons, however, are not directly related to semiconductors, fueling predictions that IT sector growth will be stunted next year too. Depleted inventories from recession-induced belt-tightening combined with stronger-than-expected consumer demand in 2010 prompted stellar 32 percent semiconductor market growth in 2010—up to $302 billion from just $205 billion in 2009, according to iSuppli. However, now that inventories have been renewed, three more general economic problem areas will mute growth next year, slowing semiconductor buying trends to just 5.1 percent growth in 2011—up just $15.4 billion to $317.4 billion. Slow steady growth will continue in 2012, according to iSuppli, reaching $357.4 billion by 2014...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-bwPT

#KYOTO-PRIZE: "Temple of the Golden Pavilion a Must-See"

The Kyoto Prize rivals the Nobel Prize in international stature as well as in the grandeur of its Ceremony and Gala. Kyoto, Japan where it is held excels in world cultural sites, with 17 located there. Below is the Temple of the Golden Pavilion--a must-see which I visited with attendees who flew in from all over the world to experience the Kyoto Prize.

Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion) in Kyoto, Japan. View the stereo pair by putting it at the very top of your screen. First view off into the distance over the top of your screen to align your left and right eyes in parallel, then lower your gaze to encompass the stereo pair without refocusing your eyes. A third 3D image will pop-out in-between the left and right images in your peripheral vision. Concentrate on the central 3D image.

"Temple of the Golden Pavillion" or "Kinkaku-ji" was the residence of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in Kyoto Japan circa 1397, after which it was converted into a Zen Temple. In 1955 a metally ill monk burned it down, but it was completely restored to its original condition. The gilding of gold was made thicker (5- instead of 1-10,000th of a millimeter) in 1987, when the interior and statue of its shogun was also restored. The gardens and other structures of Kinkaku-ji are also historic. Do not miss Kinkaku-ji--the Temple of the Golden Pavilion--if you visit Kyoto.

#ALGORITHMS: "Sandia upgrades supercomputer benchmarks"

Supercomputers used to be honking big central processing units (CPUs) with massively parallel vector processors alongside. Today, however, supercomputer makers have all but given up on massive-multi-chip CPUs, instead opting for massively parallel interconnects to manage large number of single-chip microprocessors. As a result, the applications they perform must cope with multiple simultaneous operations that the new Graph 500 benchmark measures. Look for supercomputer makers to embrace the new Graph 500 benchmark which uses graph theory to divide-and-conquer analysis of the output streams from massive simulations within five years. R. Colin Johnson, Kyoto Prize Fellow @NextGenLog

Synthetic graph was generated by a method called Kronecker multiplication. Larger versions of this generator, modeling real-world graphs, are used in the Graph500 benchmark. (Courtesy of Jeremiah Willcock, Indiana University)

Here is what my story in EETimes says about Graph 500: Exascale supercomputers running a thousand times faster than today's petaflop machines will require newer performance measures, according to Sandia National Laboratories, which announced a 30 member committee effort to define a new standard with Intel, IBM, AMD, NVIDIA, and Oracle...Graph 500 differs from the traditional Linpack by testing a supercomputer's skill at using graph theory to analyze the output streams from simulations in biological, security, social and similar large-scale problems. Graph 500 not only measures the traditional number crunching ability of supercomputers, but also their ability to shuttle around the very-large data sets represented by future supercomputers like those being addressed by the U.S. Department of Energy's exascale supercomputer initiative...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-cc67