One tiny chirp confirms both general relativity and black hole science
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) published
a monumental confirmation of classical physical theory: gravitational
waves exist. Very
few details have been derived from the signal they recorded though.
The gravitational wave was the last of the major prediction
of Einstein’s world-changing theory that scientists had yet to confirm;
according to Einstein’s understanding of spacetime, movements of mass
should create moving ripples of gravitational force. The problem was
that gravity is extremely weak when compared to pretty much any other
force in the universe, so only the most monumentally enormous happenings
could possibly create ripples big enough for scientists to detect.
That’s where black holes come in.
If your CPU has only a single core, it's a dinosaur, a quad-core computing
is now commonplace; you can even get laptop computers with four cores
today. But the core war is just starting:
Leadership in the CPU market will soon be decided by who has the most
cores, not who has the fastest clock speed.
What is it? With the gigahertz race largely abandoned, both AMD
and Intel are trying to pack more cores onto a die in order to continue
to improve processing power and aid with multitasking operations.
Miniaturizing chips further will be key to fitting these cores and other
components into a limited space. Intel will roll out 32-nanometer
processors (down from today's 45nm chips) in 2009. When is it coming? Intel has been very good about
sticking to its road map. A six-core CPU based on the Itanium design
should be out imminently, when Intel then shifts focus to a brand-new
architecture called Nehalem, to be marketed as Core i7. Core i7 will
feature up to eight cores, with eight-core systems available in 2009 or
2010. (And an eight-core AMD project called Montreal is reportedly on
tap for 2009.)
After that, the timeline gets fuzzy. Intel reportedly canceled a
32-core project called Keifer, slated for 2010, possibly because of its
complexity (the company won't confirm this, though). That many cores
requires a new way of dealing with memory; apparently you can't have 32
brains pulling out of one central pool of RAM. But we still expect cores
to proliferate when the kinks are ironed out: 16 cores by 2011 or 2012
is plausible (when transistors are predicted to drop again in size to
22nm), with 32 cores by 2013 or 2014 easily within reach. Intel says
"hundreds" of cores may come even farther down the line.
Memristor is microscopic component that can "remember" electrical states even when
turned off. It's more like a flash storagebut far cheaper and faster. A theoretical concept since 1971, it has now been built in labs
and is already starting to revolutionize everything we know about
computing, possibly making flash memory, RAM, and even hard drives
obsolete within a decade.
The memristor is just one of the incredible technological advances
sending shock waves through the world of computing. Other innovations in
the works are more down-to-earth, but they also carry watershed
significance. From the technologies that finally make paperless offices a reality to those that deliver wireless power, these advances should make your humble PC a far different beast come the turn of the decade.
This was found among best of the week's technology news, the Chinese-developed
artificially intelligent chameleon robot that changes colour to blend
into its background.
"If the theme of the 2000’s
was “mass data capture”, 2016 and beyond will be “data driven design."
Today, publicly traded companies radically redirect their vision based
on inferences made from user data, and startups define their products,
strategies and business plans based on publicly available datasets.
One of the industries most affected by the data revolution has
been retail. Before this era, retailers had a unidirectional
relationship with their customers. They identified new items that “would
sell” and presented them to their customer through a crafted
experience. Before data, this was almost entirely subjective. Data
collation now enables a bidirectional relationship between retailers and
their customers, yielding empirical metrics to corroborate subjective
vision. We see obvious examples of this with Amazon, which uses a
supervised machine learning algorithm (SMLA) platform to make
recommendations. But it’s also in places you wouldn’t expect, like a
Nordstrom department store, which uses customer smartphones to track
behavior and shopping habits.
Ignoring data can have dramatic
results. Data science, data design, and data strategy each serve as a
necessary tool for product creation. They enable a dynamic relationship
between designers and users, and a personalized, adaptive experience.
Data driven design will fundamentally change the retail experience and
the design of the products, catapulting companies to rich insights and
sustainable growth."
