Generation Of Computers

A study has provided new insight into spintronics, which has been hailed as the successor to the transistor.
According to the Cavendish Laboratory, the University of Cambridge's Department of Physics, spintronics, which exploits the electron's tiny magnetic moment, or "spin", could radically change computing due to its potential of high-speed, high-density and low-power consumption.
Spintronics research attempts to develop a spin-based electronic technology that will replace the charge-based technology of semiconductors.
While conventional technology relies on harnessing the charge of electrons, the field of spintronics depends instead on the manipulation of electrons' spin.
One of the unique properties in spintronics is that spins can be transferred without the flow of electric charge currents.
This is called "spin current" and unlike other concepts of harnessing electrons, the spin current can transfer information without generating heat in electric devices.
The major remaining obstacle to a viable spin current technology is the difficulty of creating a volume of spin current large enough to support current and future electronic devices.
However, the new Cambridge researchers in close collaboration with Professor Sergej Demokritov group at the University of Muenster, Germany, have, in part, addressed this issue.
In order to create enhanced spin currents, the researchers used the collective motion of spins called spin waves (the wave property of spins). By bringing spin waves into interaction, they have demonstrated a new, more efficient way of generating spin current.
"You can find lots of different waves in nature, and one of the fascinating things is that waves often interact with each other. Likewise, there are a number of different interactions in spin waves," Dr Hidekazu Kurebayashi, from the Microelectronics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, said.
"Our idea was to use such spin wave interactions for generating efficient spin currents," Kurebayashi explained.
According to their findings, one of the spin wave interactions (called three-magnon splitting) generates spin current ten times more efficiently than using pre-interacting spin waves.
Additionally, the findings link the two major research fields in spintronics, namely the spin current and the spin wave interaction.

Microscopic Marvels

Intel claims this new family of processors will consume half the power at the same switching speed but will be 37 per cent faster at the same voltage, particularly the lower voltages required for mobile computing devices. They will be 18 per cent faster on high-end consumer machines and servers. What does this mean? Well, it shows Intel continues to follow Moore's law - after Gordon Moore, one of Intel's founders, who famously stated way back in 1965 that the number of transistors on a processor would double every two years. But the increasing number of transistors have made computers faster, while the per-unit cost of processing power has gone down dramatically. The new 3D microprocessor will allow the processors on handheld and portable devices to become even faster. A smartphone today has the processing power of a standard desktop computer of half a decade back. The new Samsung Galaxy S2 and the upcoming iPhone 4S have dualcore processors. Whether this new technology will help Intel make a mark in the portable devices space remains to be seen, but the technology major is expected to introduce an Atom-class lowcost processor using this technology in 2012. What it means is that technology will become even faster and more pervasive than it is today. Vinod Dham was the brain behind the Pentium processor. Again, the person behind Intel's drive to make processors ever smaller is another Indian. Kaizad Mistry is an alumnus of the 1984 batch of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. And what about the technology that allows Intel to make the silicon cuts on microprocessers smaller and smaller? There is an Indian behind that as well: Kanti Jain, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur, who developed a technology in 1982 that allowed lasers to make smaller and smaller etches on silicon wafers.

Microsoft's Mobile Software Gets HTC

Microsoft's new Windows Phone platform won instant support from major manufacturers on Wednesday when China's ZTE and Taiwan's HTC Corp pledged to launch smartphones running the software. The U.S. software giant had stepped up its push into the cellphone market a day earlier with the launch of the new Windows Phone software, code-named Mango. It hopes a host of new features will help it close the gap on smartphone leaders Google Inc and Apple Inc. Microsoft has struggled for years to gain support from mobile phone manufacturers. All vendors in total sold just 1.6 million Windows Phones last quarter, giving it a market share of below 2 percent. Google and Apple together control more than 50 percent of the smartphone market. Windows Phone got a major boost in February when Nokia, the largest phone vendor by volume, said it would swap its own Symbian platform for Windows Phone. On Wednesday ZTE said it would roll out smartphones running updated Microsoft software later this year in Europe, and in 2012 in the United States. And Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC plans to bring out some models based on Microsoft's new software, its Chief Executive Peter Chou told Reuters on the fringes of an internet conference in Paris. "We are very committed to Windows phone products," he said. Analysts said Microsoft needed all the support it could get from handset vendors. "Increased support and competition can only help Windows Phone. It desperately needs more aggressively priced devices and a substantial promotional push to coincide with the Mango release," said Geoff Blaber, an analyst with CCS Insight. ZTE, which is known for its agressive entrance into the telecom equipment market, could help to boost Microsoft's position among cheaper smartphones. ZTE expects to ship more than 80 million handsets this year, up by a third from last year's 60 million units, an executive told Reuters earlier this year. Key markets for ZTE's handsets include China, Europe and the United States. In the fourth quarter of 2010, ZTE became the fourth-largest handset maker by unit shipments globally, ranking behind Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc, market research group IDC said.

Green Global Charger

Telecom firms to adopt green global charger Leading global telecommunications firms have agreed to introduce a universal charger that can be used for devices like MP3 players and tablet computers as well as mobile phones, the United Nations' ITU agency said on Monday. A detachable cable with standardised end connectors that can also be used for data transfer will come with the charger, avoiding the need for separate cables and reducing both cost and eventual waste, the agency said. The International Telecommunications Union, which groups governments and manufacturers in setting standards for the industry, said the decision to adopt the new system was taken at a meeting in Geneva at the weekend. Among companies already committed to the development, it said, were Telecom Italia, France Telecom's Orange, AT&T, Spanish group Telefonica, Swisscom and Belgacom, as well as the China Academy of Telecommunication Research. Others were expected to come in later, ITU spokesman Sanjay Acharya said. The new equipment will upgrade a universal battery charging system for mobile phones, also backed by the ITU and adopted as a universal standard by the industry's GSM Association in 2009. That decision, being implemented, will eliminate one of the most annoying problems for mobile phone users -- the need to have a separate charger for equipment produced by different manufacturers. It will also mean manufacturers no longer have automatically to supply chargers with new phones. The new system, the ITU said, will extend the advance to a wide range of lower-power devices including cameras, wireless headphones and GPS equipment as well as MP3s and tablets, which users will be able to power using the same charger and cable. Apart from saving energy with an ultra-efficient power adapter, the new chargers -- to be produced in billions over the next few years -- would be safer and use eco-friendly materials. It will also use a faster charging current to cut charging time. All these improvements, the ITU said, will enable a significant reduction of global energy use once upgraded chargers are in widespread use.