may the force be with you

IBM has created a chip that can slow down light, the latest advance in an industrywide effort to develop computers that will use only a fraction of the energy of today's machines.

The chip, called a photonic silicon waveguide, is a piece of silicon dotted with arrays of tiny holes. Scattered systematically by the holes, light shown on the chip slows down to 1/300th of its ordinary speed of 186,000 miles per second. In a computer system, slower light pulses could carry data rapidly, but in an orderly fashion. The light can be further slowed by applying an electric field to the waveguide.

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, have slowed light in laboratories. IBM, though, claims that its light-slowing device is the first to be fashioned out of fairly standard materials, potentially paving the way toward commercial adoption.

A number of companies and university researchers are currently tinkering with ways to replace the electronic components inside computers, which ferry signals with electrons, with optical technology. Optical equipment ferries data on photons, the smallest measure of light. Photons are far faster. More important, optical equipment generates less heat, curbing the growing problem of heat and power consumption.

The catch, however, is that until recently, creating optical components has been more of an art than a science. The components cost a lot to make and can't be cranked out in the millions like silicon chips. Another factor: Optical parts are typically big, unlike silicon chips, which measure only a few millimeters on a side.

Progress in blending the best of both technologies is advancing rapidly, however. Intel has demonstrated a Raman laser fashioned from silicon. Intel and start-up Luxtera have shown off silicon modulators, which chop up the light from a laser so that it can represent data.

IBM's silicon waveguide, as the name suggests, would channel light pulses created by the laser and modulator.

When the optical conversion might start to occur is a matter of speculation. Luxtera has said it will start to commercially produce products in 2007. The computer industry, however, tends to move slowly when it comes to major overhauls of computer architecture. Several components will have to be developed before photos can replace electrons inside computers.

A paper providing details on the chip will run in Nature on Wednesday.

source:http://news.zdnet.com/IBM+slows+light,+readies+it+for+networking/2100-9584_22-5928541.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn

We reported a while back that signs from retailers indicated that the Xbox 360 console will be in short supply on its 11/22 launch date, and now that information has been semi-confirmed by Microsoft. In addition to quoting various analysts on Microsoft's plans and reasons for limiting the launch date supply, this Reuters piece quotes Microsoft's CFO to the effect that the Xbox 360 won't face the same spike-then-slump phenomenon that plauged Sony's PS2 launch. The idea seems to be that would-be Xbox 360 buyers will be less unhappy with a steady but limited supply of consoles than a massive sell-off followed buy a drought.

I think there's some significant merit to this idea of doing a kind of rolling, first come, first serve thing where the consoles are steadily and predictably doled out to buyers than having a ton of lucky gamers take home units initially followed by a period where nobody can get their hands on one. That being said, Microsoft's has other motives for restricting the launch supply than what they're stating publicly. As it turns out, a complete launch date sell-out would generate a ton of positive media coverage for the new console.

Gizmodo reports that in Norway, the launch marketing campaign aims to build hype around the console by trumpeting its "SOLD OUT!" status to would-be buyers. In addition to limiting the per-store stock of consoles and having the retailers prepare to prominently note the unit's "sold out" status, Microsoft has allegedly asked Norwegian retailers to sign an agreement that they'll sell out of the consoles on the launch date.

Here in the states, Kotaku leaks the details of Target's launch preparations. From Kotaku's Target mole:

The average store can expect to have between 25 and 50 consoles the first day, but it mentions elsewhere that this number can be as low as 10. This is all determined by average store volume. I checked the computer and the consoles, games and peripherals are already in the system, so if you have a generous Target employee they can check to see exactly the amount of consoles they have in when they get the shipment.

On Nov. 22:

Every store will print up tickets representing the number of 360's and core systems they have in stock. They are also supposed to print a large sign informing customers that the store has sold out and keep it on hand.

Check out this post for more store-by-store launch date inventory details.

In other Xbox 360 news, there have been some new technical details presented the CEDEC convention in Japan. Among them are the fact that there's some differentiation in the three cores' designated functions. The Xbox 360 system software runs on cores 1 and 2, with a minimum of 5% of the processing time of each of these cores being reserved for system-related tasks like networking, I/O, etc. For console developers, core 0 will be the primary core for running game code, because they'll have that core all to themselves.

This information fits somewhat with an Inquirer article stating that game designers will be using two cores to fill the graphics pipeline. Putting the pieces together, it appears that the game's host thread will run on core 0 and the data generation threads will run on cores 1 and 2. (For more on these two terms, see Part I of my Xbox 360 tech article.)

Other details include the fact that 7GB of the double-layer game DVD media are available for storing game data, and that the HD will be used as a cache for game data.

source:http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051101-5510.html

"You can now view the moon in 3D With NASA World Wind with two sets of Clementine data and full placenames. "We have just digested the best of the images, so we can now deliver the moon at 66 feet (20 meters) of resolution" says Patrick Hogan, World Wind project manager at NASA Ames. "This is a first. No one has ever explored our moon in the 3-D interactive environment that World Wind creates," he adds. Download World Wind and view the quick tutorial or tour to interact, and there's some moon screenshots available too. A linux version of World Wind is slated for early 2006."

source:http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/11/03/0111216.shtml?tid=236&tid=95

For over 30 years, Barry Fox has trawled the world's weird and wonderful patent applications each week, digging out the most exciting, intriguing and even terrifying new ideas. His column, Invention, is available exclusively online.

Read previous Invention round-ups:

Wall-beating bugging, Eyeball electronics, phone jolts, Personal crash alarm, Talking tooth, Shark shocker, Midnight call-foiler, Burning bullets, A music lover's dream, Magic wand for gamers, The phantom car, Phone-bomb hijacking, Shocking airport scans, Old tyres to printer ink and Eye-tracking displays.

Coffee-beer

A drink somewhere between coffee and beer could soon be on the menu. Nestec, part of the Nestlé empire in Switzerland, has filed patents in every major market round the world on a "fermented coffee beverage" that pours and foams like beer, but smells of strong coffee and packs a concentrated caffeine kick.

The beverage is made in a similar way to beer, but fine-tuned temperature control stops the formation of ethyl alcohol. So the new drink could go down well with people who want a long tall pick-me-up while driving.

Nestlé admits it was tricky to preserve the characteristic coffee smell in the production process. Coffee beans are roasted normally, and the chemicals containing the natural aroma collected in a cryogenic condenser, before being converted into coffee oil. The remains of the roast are then ground to powder, mixed with yeast and sucrose, and fermented for 4 hours at just below 22°C. At this temperature the yeast can still metabolise but does not generate alcohol.

The aroma oil is then mixed in with the liquid and nitrogen is injected to make it foam. Adding a touch of extra sugar also helps trap the aroma until the drink is poured, Nestlé claim.

Read coffee-beer patent, here.

Cellphone chaperone

Watch out nannies, baby-sitters and wayward teenagers. An innocent-looking cellphone from Sony-Ericsson also works like a remote bugging device.

It’s always good to know that a baby-sitter, elderly relative or child out late is carrying a cellphone. But it’s also worrying when they don’t answer a "just-checking" call.

The new device provides a simple solution. Software on the handset checks the number of each incoming call against an address list, to see if the caller has been previously flagged. If they have, the phone rings in the usual way but switches to auto-answer after a predetermined number of rings. So the called phone becomes a live microphone listening to whatever is happening nearby.

The device can also be remotely switched to speakerphone so that the caller can shout “are you OK?” down the line and into the vicinity of the phone. If the phone has been set to voicemail, the caller can key in a code to override the diversion and force the phone into auto-answer mode.

Read the cellphone chaperone patent, here.

Video flasher

Shooting video in low light normally means using a floodlight, but this quickly gobbles up batteries in small devices.

Now Philips Lab in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, has a new idea – a white-light LED that rapidly switches on and off, working only in the spilt seconds when its light is really needed.

The camera uses a sensor that collects light at about 30 frames per second. The timing circuit also sends control pulses to the white LED, so that it provides light just when the sensor needs it, and does not waste power while the sensor is sending its signal to memory.

This, Philips reckons, will let low cost camcorders and even camera phones handle video in dimly lit rooms without flattening batteries before the home movie, or conference call, is finished.

Read the video flasher patent, here.

source:http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8248&print=true

"Nokia launched OpenSource.nokia.com today. It is the first place to look for information concerning Nokia involvement in the Open Source community. The Projects page lists all Nokia developed downloadable code including: Maemo (Development platform for Linux based handhelds), MobileNews (Mobile NNTP reader), Python for S60, Sofia-SIP (SIP User-Agent library) and more. The website also features a list of all projects Nokia contributed to."

source:http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/03/0019202&tid=162&tid=218

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,69428,00.html