IBM Discloses Working Version of a Much Higher-Capacity Chip

IBM has taken the technology industry with surprise through its announcement of successfully developing working versions of ultradense computer chips. These chips are said to possess four times the capacity of today’s most powerful chips.

This announcement was essentially made on behalf of an international consortium led by IBM. IBM has invested $3 billion in an exclusive private public partnership in New York’s Hudson Valley with New York State, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and equipment vendors to manufacture advanced computer chips.

New Generation Of Chip In Development

It should be noted that each generation of chip is defined by the minimum size of fundamental components, which play role in switch current at nanosecond intervals. In modern times technology industry is actively working towards making a commercial transition from 14 nanometer to 10 nanometer manufacturing. Each generation helps in achieving 50 per cent reduction in the amount of area required for circuitry. IBM has affirmed its new chip which is still in research phase will be based on the shirking the area of semiconductor as much as possible by 2018.

IBM currently has working samples of chips with just seven nanometer transistors. It has been able to develop such sizes due to use of advanced silicon-gremanium instead of relying on pure silicon in key regions of chip. This material has made it possible to develop faster transistor switching with low power requirements, which is an added advantage. Given the smaller size of the transistors, it is highly possible to build microprocessors with not more than 20 billion transistors.

IBM Brings Focus Back On Itself As Revolutionary Chip Manufacturer

IBM has already shed a certain amount of its computer and semiconductor manufacturing capacity in the recent past. But this announcement shows that IBM is still interested in backing the technology manufacturing base with its efficient research facilities. Rather than being the horse power in building and providing chips to the companies it will act as a pioneer in unearthing advanced technological solutions for others. IBM will have to grapple with shift to use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light for etching patterns on the chips at a resolution which approaches the diameter of an individual atom.

IBM will be licensing the technology to a variety of manufactures and most importantly, GlobalFoundries which is owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi will be making these chips for some big companies which includes, Qualcomm, Broadcom and others. It is yet to been whether semiconductor industry thinks on using silicon-gremanium as the best option or not.

IBM Refuses To Confirm Commercial Manufacturing

IBM has simply declined whether it will begin commercial manufacturing of this technology or not. Another ambitious company named Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company had given green lights to its plans to begin production of seven nanometer chips in 2017.

Given the precision required for using EUV light to keep the high capacity usage of chips optimum might be a concern in the commercial manufacturing operations. The goal of IBM here is to create next generation circuits, which offer higher capacity with reduced area, and most probably with current advancements and right amount of further research this technology will be introduced next year.

Hackers Unearth Major Security Flaw That Affects Adobe Flash Player

A major gaping hole is found in the popular Adobe Flash Player software used for watching videos online on a global scale. This flaw allows the attackers to take control of user’s system once they visit any malicious website.

Hackers Team which is known to create surveillance software for governmental agencies had stumbled upon this flaw when 400 GB of data was stolen from it over the weekend. Adobe had cleared all the speculations surrounding the emergence of this serious flaw and it had promised to make a fix available to all the users by Wednesday.

All You Need To Know About The Flaw In Flash Player

This serious flaw is present in the Adobe Flash Player 18.0.0.194 and its earlier versions, which were released for all the major OS like Windows, Mac and Linux. Adobe stresses on the fact that this flaw can be used to cause a sudden crash and act as a backdoor for the attackers to take control of affected system.

Hacking Team had described this bug as a fascinating bug, which had come to light in as many as four years of successful running of Flash player. The severity of this flaw is extremely high and some of the hackers are already utilizing it for a long time to create undue nuisance for the users with affected systems. The internal documents also stress on the point that it can be used as a weapon on mass scale to cause considerable loss of information and high-jacking of systems on a larger scale. Until a fix or security update is provided by the Adobe it will be wise to disable the Flash Player completely in the browsers to avoid further damages.

Hacking Teams Cautions Windows Users

The data released by the Hacking Team also reveals about vulnerability in the Adobe font drivers in Windows. The flaw in Flash Player has high severity rate in both 32 and 64 bits versions of Windows OS ranging from the order XP to latest 8.1. Windows computer is at greater risk of losing control to the hackers with the presence of this flaw. For successful taking control a hacker will have to rely on other vulnerability of font driver. Microsoft is quick to give heed on this situation and they are actively working on bringing a security fix for its users.

Hackers Are Already Exploiting This Flaw

Hackers Team got a wind of this flaw after a mysterious hacker going by the name PhineasFisher started exploiting this flaw. He had already created immense troubles for many companies being serviced by Hackers Team which includes even some governmental institutions.

The detailed report furnished by Hackers Team states that its RCS surveillance software possess capabilities for monitoring activities on Skype, Gmail, Facebook and Outlook.com along with cryptocurrencies transactions. This can be helpful for companies and its clients in keeping a keen eye upon its employees. However European parliament is seriously debating upon the legitimacy of any such software being used by a governmental organization to snoop upon its citizens.

Smart Phones Spot Tired Drivers

 

Smartphone App to Warn Tired Drivers

Thousands of unavoidable road accidents take place due to driver’s tiredness when theytend to feel drowsy on long journeys which could be as dangerous as drivers with alcohol consumption. Researchers have created a smartphone app which warns drivers if they tend to appear distracted or drowsy behind the wheel, with the help of a blinking light and noise alert to help them overcome this problem.

Smartphone technology is utilised by app to imitate fancier car safety systems by identifying troublesome signs which could lead to accidents. According to TechNewsDaily website it has been reported that most of the updated phones with cameras facing front as well as back enables the app to monitor the driver’s head pose, eyes and the blinking rate in detecting possible drowsiness or distractions, while keeping track on the road ahead.

Computer scientist at Dartmouth College, Andrew Campbell has commented that the distance can be determined between cars in front and whether a driver is changing lanes on the outside while detecting drowsiness and distraction inside. 

Mounted on Dashboard Holder As Hands-Free

The Smartphone is mounted on a dashboard holder as hands-free helper for the drivers and whenever the car safety app tends to identify any dangerous patterns in the behaviour of the driver or outside conditions, it signals the driver with a blinking light and noise alert.

The app developers’ team from Dartmouth College, Autonomous National University of Mexico, and Microsoft Research Asia together with the University of Bologna in Italy had to face big challenges in making their idea a reality. Smartphones do not have the potential ofprocessing video streams from both the front and the back camera at the same time.

Campbell together with his colleagues had to create intelligent algorithms which could switch quickly between the two cameras at the time of processing the data. Quick switching solution meant that the car safety app technically has a blind spot in the front or back at any particular point of time. This problem has been fixed by utilising the smartphone’s other sensors like the accelerometers and gyroscopes in order to find out what goes on in the blind spot either inside or outside the car at any point of time.

Vision Algorithms with Minimum Computing Power

Campbell has informed the website that when the phone camera is looking at the driver, the accelerometer sensor is used to detect if the car is weaving. The sensors are used to fill in when the camera is looking at the wrong place. The vision algorithms of the app has the potential of pushing the computing limits of prevailing smartphones and also slow down the image processing from the cameras.

Hence the developers have created vision algorithms with the minimum computing power essentials as they perform tests on smartphones. The focus of the team lies in completing road testing of the application with small pool of users in November or December. Around 20 people have been enlisted with three various car models though they admit that it would not be easy to push the limits of the app without the drivers almost falling off to sleep behind the wheels. Campbell comments that unless someone is up all night, it would be difficult to predict whether they will be tired or not.

Chevrolet to Roll out Tiny Air Conditioner for Overheated Smartphones

There is perhaps worse than the undesirable burning sensation that you experience when your skin touch the seat of your car on a scorching summer day. In such situation, you only can have the cool air of AC that is fitted inside the cabin of car. But, no one has thought of the ways through which the Smartphone can be kept cool.

Overheating Smartphone has now become a very common phenomenon. Keeping this fact on mind, the US based car maker Chevrolet has released small-sized air-conditioner system, which takes care of any overheated Smartphone models and enhance the life of its battery. The models, which are likely to be presented with the tiny air-conditioner systems, are 2016 Malibu, Cruze and also Volt sedans that include wireless charging facility.

Reasons for which Chevy introduced the technology

Though Chevrolet is mainly recognized as the car manufacturer, the Active Phone Cooling technology that is introduced by this company will surely help the Smartphone to last longer. It is expected that the now gadget will work in combination with the air conditioning system of a car. Chevy developed this technology when it found that the car owners’ mobiles do not charge while they become extremely hot. The overheating may also be caused due to other factors like games and intense apps, which put a stress on the processor of a handset.

It is the cold air outlet that calms down the phone while it is placed on a small tray, which below a dashboard. It is very helpful for those Smartphone users, who depend on their handsets to play songs and receive hands-free calls on highway.

From a reliable source, it is informed that Chevrolet has considered it as the industry-first technology, although the same type of effect may be attained by fashioning a tiny Smartphone hammock and then hanging this in front part of your vehicle’s regular air-conditioning path. But, the driver can get a neater solution with the Active Phone Cooling.

While carrying out the tests, the engineers of Chevrolet subjected their cars to extreme temperatures to know whether the subsystems worked appropriately. And while checking the wireless charging quality of a Smartphone, they observed that some handsets would delay charging or also shut off after just a few minutes in the hot temperatures inside the cabin of car. And, thus it has planned to insert the feature of Active Phone Cooling to it’s the different models that are already mentioned.

How the system works

The system sends cold air to help in lowering the phone's hotness and Active Phone Cooling works only when HVAC structure is switched on by the car chauffeur.

After connecting their compatible Smartphone with the accessible MyLink radio, the users can access the features of the phone. In a press release, Dan Lascu, who is an engineer of Impala said that innovation never indicate reinventing a wheel. He also added that sometimes simplicity provides the most preferable solution to a difficulty. However, Chevy claims that other auto manufacturers do not have any response for this feature.

Neutrinos Found To Switch To Elusive ‘Tau’ Flavour

First Direct Proof of Metamorphosis

Physicist have found the first direct proof of a metamorphosis between two of the known forms of neutrinos by utilising a beam shot through the Earth’s crust, which are known as `muon’ and `tau’ of basic particles.Oscillation Project with Emulsion tracking Apparatus – OPERA conducted an experiment, at the Gran Sasso underground lab in central Italy made headlines in the year 2011 after its announcement that it had identified neutrinos travelling faster than light, against Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

 However, the claim was later proved false when the researcher found various probable sources of error in the measurements. The OPERA association declared on June 15 that it had now achieved the original goal of observing the switch in neutrino flavours. According to a neutrino physicist at the University of Genoa, Marco Pallavicini, who is not a member of the OPERA collaboration, states that `it was an extremely difficult measurement that no one had done before.Three known forms of flavours, neutrino, electron, muon and tau and the particles name refer to the fact that on unusual occasion when neutrino tend to interact with protons or neutrons, they create electrons, muons or tau leptons.

T2K – First Direct Evidence of Appearance of Different Flavour

Scientists have been suspecting that neutrinos could transform from one flavour to another and various previous experiments conducted which had used known sources of certain type of neutrino have detected fewer neutrinos than what could be expected if particles had not changed flavour. The T2K experiment carried out in July 2013 envisaged the first direct evidence of the appearance of a different flavour rather than the disappearance of the original one and discovered electron neutrinos in a beam which was originally made of muon neutrinos. In the span of 2008 and 2012, a beam of muon neutrinos was shot from Europe’s particle physics lab – CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, to the base of the Gran Sasso massif some 730 km towards the southeast where the Italian lab is carved in the rock. Some of the muon neutrinos had changed into tan neutrinos by the time the neutrinos had arrived at Gran Sasso and when these hit the lead targets in the OPERA detector, they created tau lepton according to the latest result.

Discovered 5th Tau Lepton – Experiment 

Giovanni De Lellis, a physicist at the University of Naples, also an OPERA spokesperson informed that the leptons tend to decay in just one-trillionth of a second. Although it tends to travel at almost the same speed of light, the tau lepton only runs for less than a millimetre. The short lived particles with an array of 150,000 bricks, each of which weighs around 8 kg containing 57 stacked emulsion plates, was detected by OPERA.

With the set-up having 110,000 square metres of surface area, researchers have set up an automated system in order to search the plates for microscopic streaks which could signal the fleeting presence of tau leptons. In the incomplete result which was announced last year, OPERA collaboration calculated four probable tau lepton findings not adequate in claiming a success as per the severe detection criteria of particle physics. However, the physicists have now discovered a fifth tau lepton adequate for the experiment to be considered as successful.