Software tweak doubles computer processing speed, halves energy use
By Paul McClure
February 22, 2024
https://newatlas.com/computers/smht-par ... rocessing/
Existing processors in PCs, smartphones and other devices can be supercharged for enormous power and efficiency gains using a new parallel processing software framework designed to eliminate bottlenecks and use multiple chips at once.
Most modern computers, from smartphones and PCs to data center servers, contain graphics processing units (GPUs) and hardware accelerators for AI and machine learning. Well-known commercial examples include Tensor Cores on NVIDIA GPUs, Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) on Google Cloud servers, Neural Engines on Apple iPhones, and Edge TPUs on Google Pixel phones.
Breakthrough Pseudo CMOS Transistors for 1000 Times More Efficient Computing
February 23, 2024 by Brian Wang
Beijing researchers made a pseudo-CMOS architecture for sub-picowatt logic computing that uses self-biased molybdenum disulfide transistors.
As transistors are scaled to smaller dimensions, their static power increases. Combining two-dimensional (2D) channel materials with complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) logic architectures could be an effective solution to this issue because of the excellent field-effect properties of 2D materials. However, 2D materials have limited polarity control. The transistors have a gapped channel that forms a tunable barrier—thus circumventing the polarity control of 2D materials—and exhibit a reverse-saturation current below 1 pA with high reliability and endurance.
In our data-driven era, solving complex problems efficiently is crucial. However, traditional computers often struggle with this task when dealing with a large number of interacting variables, leading to inefficiencies such as the von Neumann bottleneck. A new type of collective state computing has emerged to address this issue by mapping these optimization problems onto something called the Ising problem in magnetism.
Here's how it works: Imagine representing a problem as a graph, where nodes are connected by edges. Each node has two states, either +1 or -1, representing the potential solutions. The goal is to find the configuration that minimizes the system's total energy based on a concept called a Hamiltonian.
I used to believe that computers and the Internet would be the answer to all our problems. That they would make us augmented humans, able to everything much easier, faster, better and feel better at the same time.
In actuality, I largely credit them with my high anxiety, anhedonia, awful back & neck pain, as well as horrible hands pain, making life a dislikable hardship, even when allegedly living in a "1st world country". I am just really fed up with using these (largely the same, except for some details) machines on a daily basis, especially the worldwide web and especially doing much on computers (not gaming, as I hardly game anymore). It is basically all the same sh*t over and over again, every day. They are overrated imo, at this point, in early 2024.
There's practically nothing that would make all of this significantly less hurtful, stressful and more tolerable, other than just somehow using them less, avoiding them more often, especially the non-passive use (easier written than done). At least I have YouTube Premium these days and I have ways to watch it on a bigger screen. There are also some ever growing websites, which can seriously teach, allow learning or show many documentaries, but they cost and can be tiring.
Voice control is useless unfortunately, it works very poorly for me. Brain control at this point is only for completely paralyzed people and only a few of them, although the number of users is likely to increase in the coming years. I'm not amused at this point. I feel deceived and deluded tbh. :-/
Global economy doubles in product every 15-20 years. Computer performance at a constant price doubles nowadays every 4 years on average. Livestock-as-food will globally stop being a thing by ~2050 (precision fermentation and more). Human stupidity, pride and depravity are the biggest problems of our world.
Microsoft Adds a Ton of New Features to AI Copilot for Windows 11
It can now access system settings, use plug-ins for a variety of popular apps, and lots more.
By Josh Norem March 1, 2024
Microsoft added its AI-powered Copilot assistant to Windows 11 in September 2023, and today, it's launching the first massive update to the service. The new update includes a sizable number of new features, some arriving immediately; others will roll out over the next month or require new apps to be installed. Highlights include the ability to change Windows settings and new plug-ins for popular apps like Instacart, so you can order groceries from Copilot on your computer. The update gives us a glimpse of what an "AI PC" can do, where it functions like a true virtual assistant handling various everyday tasks.
Something Strange Happens When You Ask AI to Act Like Star Trek by Marianne Guenot
March 1, 2024
Introduction:
(Science Alert) The art of speaking to AI chatbots is continuing to frustrate and baffle people.
A study attempting to fine-tune prompts fed into a chatbot model found that, in one instance, asking it to speak as if it were on Star Trek dramatically improved its ability to solve grade-school-level math problems.
"It's both surprising and irritating that trivial modifications to the prompt can exhibit such dramatic swings in performance," the study authors Rick Battle and Teja Gollapudi at software firm VMware in California said in their paper.
The study, first reported by New Scientist, was published on February 9 on arXiv, a server where scientists can share preliminary findings before they have been validated by careful scrutiny from peers.
Using AI to speak with AI
Machine learning engineers Battle and Gallapudi didn't set out to expose the AI model as a Trekkie. Instead, they were trying to figure out if they could capitalize on the "positive thinking" trend.
The most popular words of 2023 were recently released, with AI Large Language Model (LLM) unquestionably topping the list. As a front-runner, ChatGPT also emerged as one of the international buzzwords of the year. These disruptive innovations in AI owe much to big data, which has played a pivotal role. Yet, AI has simultaneously presented new opportunities and challenges to the development of big data.
High-capacity data storage is indispensable in today's digital economy. However, major storage devices like hard disk drives and semiconductor flash devices face limitations in terms of cost-effectiveness, durability, and longevity.
Optical data storage offers a promising green solution for cost-effective and long-term data storage. Nonetheless, optical data storage encounters a fundamental limitation in the spacing of adjacent recorded features, owing to the optical diffraction limit. This physical constraint not only impedes the further development of direct laser writing machines but also affects optical microscopy and storage technology.
The rapid advancement in machine learning techniques and sensing devices over the past decades have opened new possibilities for the detection and tracking of objects, animals, and people. The accurate and automated detection of visual targets, also known as intelligent machine vision, can have various applications, ranging from the enhancement of security and surveillance tools to environmental monitoring and the analysis of medical imaging data.
While machine vision tools have achieved highly promising results, their performance often declines in low lighting conditions or when there is limited visibility. To effectively detect and track dim targets, these tools should be able to reliably extract features such as edges and corners from images, which conventional sensors based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology are often unable to capture.
Researchers at Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently introduced a new approach to develop sensors that could better detect dim targets in complex environments. Their approach, outlined in Nature Electronics, relies on the realization of in-sensor dynamic computing, thus merging sensing and processing capabilities into a single device.
FCC Votes to Raise Broadband Definition to 100Mbps Down, 20Mbps Up
Slower speeds no longer count as broadband in the FCC's eyes.
By Ryan Whitwam March 15, 2024
After years of deadlocked votes, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is fully staffed and making progress. For the first time since 2015, the FCC has voted to increase the standards for what constitutes "broadband" internet connectivity. Going forward, only connections with at least 100Mbps down and 20Mbps up will be considered broadband.
A research team led by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in partnership with National University of Singapore (NUS) has created an innovative microelectronic device that can potentially function as a sustainable, high-performance "bit-switch." This paves the way for future computing technologies to process data much faster while using significantly less energy.
By harnessing tiny, stable and speedy magnetic whirls called skyrmions, the device can operate using 1,000 times less power than commercial memory technologies. This discovery was reported in the journal Nature.
