Engineers at the University of Southampton have developed a configurable chip which can correct faults in newly - manufactured transistors and can be implemented in mainstream devices such as mobile phones and computers, has been developed by engineers at the University of Southampton.

In a paper just published in Electronics Letters, Dr Peter Wilson with Dr Reuben Wilcock from the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), describes the Configurable Analogue Transistor (CAT) which he and his team have developed, and for which they have a patent pending. The CAT approach can be applied to batches of transistors which in testing after manufacture prove to have an unacceptably high variability.

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UCLA researchers have advanced a novel lens-free high-throughput imaging technique for potential use in diagnosing medical conditions.

The Lensless Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging, or LUCAS technique is used to quickly and accurately count targeted cell types in a homogenous cell solution. Removing the lens from the imaging process allows LUCAS to be scaled down to the point that it can eventually be integrated into a regular wireless mobile phone. Samples could be loaded into a specially equipped phone using a disposable microfluidic chip.

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IBM and its joint development partners, AMD, Freescale, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba and the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), have produced the first working static random access memory (SRAM) for the 22 nanometer (nm) technology node - the world’s first reported working cell built at its 300mm research facility in Albany, New York.

SRAM chips are precursors to more complex devices such as microprocessors. The SRAM cell utilises a conventional six-transistor design and has an area of 0.1um2, breaking the previous SRAM scaling barriers.

Dr TC Chen, vice president of Science and Technology, IBM Research, explained: “We are working at the ultimate edge of what is possible - progressing toward advanced, next-generation semiconductor technologies. This new development is a critical achievement in the pursuit to continually drive miniaturisation in microelectronics.”

22 nm is two generations away in chip manufacturing. The next generation is 32 nm — where IBM and its partners are in development with their 32 nm high-K metal gate technology.

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Siemens IT Solutions and Services, Austrian Research Centres (ARC) and Graz University of Technology have teamed up to develop a quantum cryptography chip for commercial use.

The chip, which protects data by generating a completely random sequence of numbers from particles of light, replaces the currently used system of key distribution based on mathematical algorithms.

The prototype 0f the quantum cryptography chip is already available, and the corresponding fibre optic network for absolutely safe, chip-based data transfer will be presented in October 2008 at Siemens IT Solutions and Services in Vienna.

Quantum cryptography works with individual light particles know as photons, which are generated and coded by an optical array. The security of the data is guaranteed by laws of nature, as photons generate completely random keys. The mathematical formulae used in the past, which could be decrypted with enough time and effort, will soon be a thing of the past.

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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has reported its seventh consecutive quarterly loss. The chip-maker lost £596m ($1.19 billion) between April and June, even though sales were up on the same period a year ago.

The AMD results were published days after rival Intel, posted a 25 per cent gain in net profit.

Food-borne diseases could soon be detected using a lab-on-chip device made possible through microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology.

A team of European researchers has created a prototype system to prepare samples and perform DNA tests on bacteria in a portable, cost-effective chip.

The EU-funded OptoLabCard project is based at the Spanish research centre Ikerlan.

What sets the OptoLabCard prototype apart from previous devices is the material used to manufacture the components of the chip, and the way in which samples are prepared prior to testing.

Using a single material for most components – a negative thick photoresist, makes the chips simpler and cheaper to produce.

The chip itself is disposable, while a reader or base unit contains all the electronics and optics. Meanwhile, incorporating sample preparation into the chip means that users can effectively replicate laboratory processes out in the field.

In order to detect the presence of bacteria, a reliable sample is essential. Rubbing a swab across a chicken carcass, for example, might produce a sample containing as few as ten bacteria, an amount that size could go undetected once transferred into the device. The inability to provide a representative sample could lead to the bird, or the entire batch to be deemed clean, when actually, the meat may be covered with dangerous pathogens.

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An optical chip, operating at data rates of almost 640 GB/s, can potentially make the Internet run up to 100 times faster.

Physicists at the University of Sydney in Australia believe the chalcogenide glass photonic chips are cheap to produce since they can be made from plain glass crystals.

The chips increase internet speed by preventing networks from being bogged down by old fashioned electronic components when transmitting information at the speed of light.

Scientists say this technology could be commercially available in as early as five years

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new technology designed to meet the cooling needs of future high-performance chips.

Using ‘microjets’, the researchers have been able to achieve a cooling capacity of 1,000 watts per square centimetre.

The cooling system is made of groves narrower than a millimetre wide. These channels are formed on top of a chip and covered with a metal plate containing tiny holes. The cooling liquid, hydroflurocarbon, is pumped through the holes in microjets, allowing the liquid to flow along the channels and cool the chip. As the liquid is heated by the hot chip inside the channels, it bubbles and momentarily becomes a vapour, facilitating the cooling process.

Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, and leader of the research project, explained: “In many ways, progress in the computer and electronics industries is becoming increasingly defined by how well you can cool chips.

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A research team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has developed a super-fast chip that could advance broadband internet technology.

The multiplexer chip is the first of its kind to be developed using the quantum effect of resonant tunnelling diode, according to the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

The integrated circuit chip built at the University laboratory has an operating speed of 45Gb/s, while using roughly 75 per cent less energy than the previous version. The speed enables the transfer of about 4 full-length movies in one second.

The best operational broadband Internet services provide users with data transfer speed of 40Gb/s while most other high-speed online connections offer 10Gb/s.

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IBM is using tiny rivers of water to cool computer chips that have circuits and components stacked on top of each other – a design the researchers say promises to advance Moore’s law, and significantly reduce energy consumed by data centres.

IBM researchers, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute, Berlin, have created a prototype device that integrates the cooling system into the 3D chips by piping water directly between each layer in the stack. These so-called 3D chip stacks – which take chips and memory devices that traditionally sit side-by-side on a silicon wafer and stacks them together on top of one another – presents one of the most promising approaches to enhancing chip performance beyond its predicted limits.

This development follows IBM’s advance in chip-stacking technology in a manufacturing environment, which when compared to 2D chips, shortens the distance information on a chip needs to travel by up to 1000 times, and allows for the addition of up to 100 times more channels, or pathways for that information to flow.

Thomas Brunschwiler, project leader, IBM, explained: “As we package chips on top of each other to significantly speed a processor’s capability to process data, we have found that the conventional coolers attached to the back of a chip don’t scale. In order to exploit the potential of high-performance3D chip stacking, we need interlaying cooling.

“Until now nobody has demonstrated viable solutions to this problem.”

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A tiny sensor that can read the data from nano-scale magnetic circuits is being developed by researchers from Sheffield and Leeds Universities.

The researchers believe that in some cases, magnetic nanotechnology devices could offer higher device density, lower power consumption, improved reliability or additional functionality, compared with more traditional silicone-based devices.

The project aims to develop a network of magnetic nanowires that can process information. The magnetic polarisation of various regions, or domains of the wire would represent the binary numbers of digital information. While this is not new, the challenge facing the team is to develop a device that can read out the magnetic data in a form compatible with modern electronics.

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