RESEARCHERS have managed to accurately create a single atom transistor.

A team of researchers from the University of New South Wales has managed to create a working transistor from a single phosphorus atom. Along with the transistor itself, the team has fabbed a gate to control current flow.

According to Michelle Simmons, director of the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at the University of New South Wales, the big breakthrough isn't making a single atom transistor, as that has been done before but only by chance. Simmons told AFP, "This is the first time anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy."

It is hoped that single-atom transistors will enable chip designers to continue upholding Moore's law. It is expected that by the end of the decade, chip designers need to break with current convention to miniaturise transistors further to maintain Moore's law, with single-atom transistors being the obvious - if extremely challenging - end point.

At present the researchers have to use liquid helium to cool the single-atom transistor, so it goes without saying that this won't end up your gaming rig for a good few years yet. Nevertheless, it does show that single atom transistors can be designed and built. µ

RESEARCH in part funded by AMD has found that by using the CPU to pre-fetch data for a GPU performance can be increased by 20 per cent.

Researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU) claimed to have measured a 20 per cent performance boost by having the CPU fetch data from RAM to feed the GPU in chips that have on-die CPU and GPUs, such as AMD's Fusion processors. The team claims to have set the GPU to do heavy computation while the CPU acted as the controller behind the GPU's raw computing power.

Huiyang Zhou, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NCSU commented that while firms like AMD are putting CPUs and GPUs on the same die, "the CPU cores and GPU cores still work almost exclusively on separate functions. They rarely collaborate to execute any given program, so they aren't as efficient as they could be. That's the issue we're trying to resolve."

Zhou continued, "Our approach is to allow the GPU cores to execute computational functions, and have CPU cores pre-fetch the data the GPUs will need from off-chip main memory [...] This is more efficient because it allows CPUs and GPUs to do what they are good at. GPUs are good at performing computations. CPUs are good at making decisions and flexible data retrieval."

Although AMD and Nvidia GPGPUs provide considerable compute performance, the challenge is feeding them with enough data from main memory. The idea of using a CPU to feed GPU cores wasn't viable until now, according to Zhou, because CPUs and GPUs were not on the same die.

The research will be presented at the 18th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture on 27 February. µ

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY GIANT IBM has shown off sub-10nm carbon nanotube transistors at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting.

Big Blue's scientists took the opportunity to highlight how important carbon nanotubes are set to become by showing the first working sub-10nm transistors made with the material. Given that Intel has said that its tri-gate transistor technology will not scale beyond 14nm, it looks like IBM could be set to take the lead in the sub-10nm chipmaking stakes.

IBM was quick to point out the advantages of its carbon nanotube transistors, saying they already exhibit "excellent off-state behaviour in extremely scaled devices". Of course it is still early days for carbon nanotube transistors, but IBM said it expects chips to be using them within the next 10 years.

Not content with next generation transistors, IBM also showed off racetrack memory, a technology that has the benefits of both the high capacity of magnetic hard drives and the speed of solid-state memory. IBM's researchers talked about how to use CMOS fabrication techniques to print racetrack memory on 200mm wafers.

IBM demonstrated read/write functionality on an array of 256 in-plane horizontal racetrack devices. The firm claimed the demonstration lays the foundations for improved racktrack memory density and reliability.

IBM also showed off a CMOS process to print a graphene integrated circuit on a 200mm wafer. The researchers said the technique still needs "detailed technical stability" evaluated, but that the results are promising for the production of graphene circuits for use in high temperature environments.

Bringing silicon transistors below 10nm is expected to be a challenge that might not be easily solvable. Carbon nanotubes and graphene are often cited as two building blocks for sub-10nm process nodes and IBM seems to be the first major research organisation that's showing very early samples. µ

SOFTWARE OUTFIT Microsoft has shown off some of its research work on surfaces and user interfaces.

In a video posted to a Microsoft blog, the firm showed off how it is using Kinect, its add-on to the XBox 360 games console, to add gesture and speech control to its Natural User Interface (NUI) work.

"Kinect is one technology that pushes the boundaries of how we can build more natural ways to interact with technology - through gestures and speech - but that's only one aspect of our work around NUI," wrote Microsoft's Steve Clayton.

"This shift towards natural user interfaces opens up enormous opportunities - in a wide variety of fields. It's an exciting time for Microsoft, our customers and our partners. As our researchers and developers continue to make advancements in this area, we'll begin to see products and ideas that we never even thought possible."

Another blog from the firm goes into slightly more detail about the work, and details Omnitouch, which should make any touchable surface a computing screen.

"We wanted to capitalise on the tremendous surface area the real world provides," said Hrvoje Benko, of Microsoft's Natural Interaction Research group as he suggested that we are about to be waving our hands towards Minority Report-like interactivity.

"The surface area of one hand alone exceeds that of typical smart phones. Tables are an order of magnitude larger than a tablet computer. If we could appropriate these ad hoc surfaces in an on-demand way, we could deliver all of the benefits of mobility while expanding the user's interactive capability."

Omnitouch uses a wearable device, with a short range camera and a Pico projector that projects a display that can be touched and controlled by the user, and in a video it was shown shining a keypad onto someones palm, displaying a camera, and working with pinch and zoom controls.

"This custom camera works on a similar principle to Kinect, but it is modified to work at short range," added Benko. "This camera and projector combination simplified our work because the camera reports depth in world coordinates, which are used when modeling a particular graphical world; the laser-based projector delivers an image that is always in focus, so didn't need to calibrate for focus."

He also discussed was Pocketouch, which is a way of controlling your handsets touchscreen while it is in your pocket. This has less immediate appeal, unless you are the sort of person that likes to be seen stroking your pocket in the public but could be used to perform basic tasks on a phone, like answering it, while it is locked in the confines of a blazer or pair of chinos.

This was not the easiest proposition, according to Benko, but it works, even if it does lend itself to some rather cringeworthy quotes.

"We knew we had solved the toughest challenge, which was to figure out a reliable way to detect and segment strokes from the capacitive touch sensor through fabric," he explained.

"If the user is sloppy with strokes - and believe me, when you're doing it through the pocket of a jacket, the results are sloppy." µ

BOFFINS have envisioned an operating system for cities, which works like a PC OS keeping traffic, buildings and services running quickly.

According to the BBC, the Urban OS software will take in data from sensors dotted around the city to keep an eye on what's happening. This means that if there is a fire, it could manage the traffic lights to get fire engines to the event quickly.

The sensors will be able to monitor large scale processes like traffic flow or more specific events like temperature sensors inside individual rooms. The Urban OS concept was unveiled at the Machine-2-Machine conference in Rotterdam.

It completely bypasses humans to manage communications between the sensors and can give a city the means to realise significant cost savings, implementation consistency, quality and manageability, indicated Steve Lewis, the head of Living PlanIT, the company behind Urban OS.

He said, "If you were using an anatomy analogy, the city has a network like the nervous system, talking to a whole bunch of sensors gathering the data and causing actions. We distribute that nervous system into the parts of the body - the buildings, the streets and other things."

McLaren Electronic Systems, which creates sensors for Formula One cars, developed the underlying technology for the Urban OS.

It has also developed an extensive set of application services that will run Urban OS, called Placeapps, which are like apps on a smartphone.

It could be an opportunity for developers, who will also be able to build their own apps to get at data and provide certain services around a city.

As interesting as it sounds, we don't think they've actually built it yet, and frankly it does sound not only very blue-sky, but also a bit scary. µ

ASIAN LABOUR MARKET BOOSTER Nike is readying the release of a pair of shoes first seen in the film Back to the Future 2, the Nike Air Mag.

Those who have seen the film and noticed the shoes will have seen a rather obvious Nike logo on the side of them, as well as the fact that they are self lacing. This might have some appeal to the more lazy amongst us, but for fans of the film, and trainer enthusiasts, they are something of a must-have.

They have been a long time coming. Nike has had a patent for self lacing shoes for some time, and an actual release has always seemed like a natural follow-on. Now it seems that time is upon us.

Trainer site Nicekicks was sent a mysterious invite from Nike, which although it did not actually say that the shoes were coming out dropped some rather large hints in the form of a box that included a paid of silver, visor like sunglasses worn by Dr Brown in the filmn along with a recorded message from the doc himself.

It said, "Welcome to Los Angeles. If my calculations are correct, over the next 24 hours you are about to see some SERIOUS SH*T!" Also included was an invitation to an event, hosted by Nike designer Tinker Hatfield, that reads, "IT'S ABOUT TIME...an unveiling that could change the course of time." The time is later today.

If Nike has cracked its self-lacing technology - and hasn't just turned to Velcro, for example - then perhaps the shoes will deserve the hype that they will receive.

Nike filed the patent for its self lacing system in November 2009. Patent apers appear to show a lacing system that reacts when a foot is placed in the shoe.

A video posted to Youtube by Dr Emmet Brown, shows the shoes in some detail. In a message posted underneath the video, incidentally the only video posted by the account, the Doc adds, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say that looks like shelves and shelves of 2011 Nike MAG shoes." µ

HIGH TECHNOLOGY FIRMS IBM and 3M are collaborating on work to build adhesives for sticking semiconductors together into silicon towers.

The firms expect that by perfecting the adhesive they will be able to build a commercial semiconductor made up of around 100 layers, with each layer being an individual chip.

"Today's chips, including those containing '3D' transistors, are in fact 2D chips that are still very flat structures," said Bernard Meyerson, VP of research at IBM as he announced the collaboration.

"Our scientists are aiming to develop materials that will allow us to package tremendous amounts of computing power into a new form factor - a silicon 'skyscraper.' We believe we can advance the state-of-art in packaging, and create a new class of semiconductors that offer more speed and capabilities while they keep power usage low - key requirements for many manufacturers, especially for makers of tablets and smartphones."

Wafers are the key, specifically, bonding them, and the firms said that their adhesives, which will let information travel between chips and take heat away from key areas, could be as much as 1,000 times faster than current 3D packaging methods.

"Capitalising on our joint know-how and industry experience, 3M looks forward to working alongside IBM - a leader in developing pioneering packaging for next-generation semiconductors," said Herve Gindre, division vice president at 3M Electronics Markets Materials Division.

Separately but not unrelated, Invensas said this week that it would demonstrate the dual-face down (DFD) use of its multi-die face-down (Xfd) packaging technology at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) next month.

Xfd is a multi-tie wirebond packaging system that, in case you had not guessed, mounts circuits upside down, staggering them in what the firm called a shingle-like configuration. Invensas reckons that this decreases component size, saves around a third in height, improves electrical performance by up to 70 per cent and improves heat transfer by around 25 per cent.

Invensas added that its Xfd technology costs less to manufacture than other multi-die DRAM packages, not least because it users less gold and other materials.

"We developed the Xfd technology platform in response to continued industry demand for denser, faster and cheaper DRAM solutions for servers and mobile devices," said Simon McElrea, president of Invensas Corporation.

"Xfd provides single-die package performance in a multi-die configuration as well as delivering significant thickness and thermal advantages. Unlike more complex alternatives, Xfd is manufactured using existing industry manufacturing capacity, significantly reducing the cost, time and risk of high-volume adoption." µ

AN UNMANNED SPACESHIP backed by bookselling Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin organisation did not reach its intended trajectory this weekend and was destroyed.

According to the Wall Street Journal the rocket, which resembles a water tower, went off course and lost contact with ground control.

The financial rag said that the loss represents the risks of private space travel. Though that's a fair assessment, we suspect that Bezos' accountant might have a different view.

Investigators are looking at the remains of the ship, which might mean weighing them for scrap, and are said to be working to find the cause of the crash.

This is the second time the vehicle has been aimed at the stars, and according to Jeff Bezos the last time it went much better. However, the crash has not deterred him from his plans.

In a note published on the Blue Origin web site Bezos said, "A flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered our range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle. Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard, and the Blue Origin team is doing an outstanding job. We're already working on our next development vehicle."

Although this vehicle is unmanned Blue Origin also has plans for space people carriers. "We're working on the sub-orbital crew capsule separately," added Bezos, "as well as an orbital crew vehicle to support NASA's Commercial Crew program." µ

A BOFFIN HAS DISCOVERED a way to use lightbulbs to broadcast wireless internet, dubbed 'LiFi'.

Physicist Harald Hass said he has developed a technology that can broadcast data through the same connection as a normal lamp.

Handily, just turning on the light switch in a room would switch on the internet connection, according to Professor Hass of the school of engineering at Edinburgh University in the UK.

Hass claims that 'LiFi', or Light Fidelity, could send wireless data from the 'white space' in TV spectrum or unused satellite signals.

Current methods using radio waves to transmit data are inefficient, he said, citing mobile phones as an example. In this case there are 1.4 million base stations boosting the signal but most of the energy is used to cool it, meaning it is only five per cent efficient.

But the 40 billion light bulbs in use across the world are far more efficient and by replacing old fashioned incandescent models with LED bulbs, Hass claimed he could turn them all into internet transmitters.

This invention, which he calls D-Light, can send data faster than the 10 megabits per second speed of a broadband connection by altering the frequency of the ambient light in the room.

This could be used in hospitals, airplanes, military, and even underwater. Airplane passengers could in theory be able to surf the Internet from signals beamed out of the lights on board.

"The way we transmit wireless data is inefficient electromagnetic waves, in particular radio waves which are limited, they are sparse, they are expensive and only have a certain range," Professor Hass said.

"It is this limitation which does not cope with wireless data... and we are running out of efficiency.

"Light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum... wouldn't it be great to use it for wireless communications?" µ

BOFFINS at computer industry giant IBM have unveiled the initial prototypes of its cognitive computing chips that can emulate the brain's abilities for perception, action and cognition.

The chip maker's first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems such as the brain through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry.

Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing by scientists at IBM.

Systems built with these chips, called cognitive computers, won't be programmed the same way traditional computers are today. Instead, they are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember and learn from the outcomes, mimicking the brain's structural and synaptic plasticity.

To do this, IBM is combining principles from nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing as part of a multi-year cognitive computing initiative. The company and its university collaborators also announced they have been awarded approximately $21 million in new funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for Phase 2 of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project.

The goal of SyNAPSE is to create a system that analyses complex information from multiple sensory modalities at once, and also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with its environment. This is all while rivaling the brain's compact size and low power usage. The IBM team has already successfully completed Phases 0 and 1.

"This is a major initiative to move beyond the von Neumann paradigm that has been ruling computer architecture for more than half a century," said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research. "Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture. These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government."

IBM's first cognitive computing prototype chips use digital silicon circuits inspired by neurobiology to make up what is referred to as a "neurosynaptic core" with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons).

IBM has two working prototype designs. Both cores were fabricated in 45nm SOI-CMOS and contain 256 neurons. One core contains 262,144 programmable synapses and the other contains 65,536 learning synapses. The IBM team has successfully demonstrated simple applications like navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification.

IBM's long-term goal is to build a chip system with ten billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses, while consuming merely one kilowatt of power and occupying less than two liters of volume.

"Imagine traffic lights that can integrate sights, sounds and smells and flag unsafe intersections before disaster happens or imagine cognitive co-processors that turn servers, laptops, tablets, and phones into machines that can interact better with their environments," said Dr. Modha. µ