Lifeboat Foundation

The integration of electronic chips in commercial devices has significantly evolved over the past decades, with engineers devising various integration strategies and solutions. Initially, computers contained a central processor or central processing unit (CPU), connected to memory units and other components via traditional communication pathways, known as front-side-bus (FSB) interfaces.

Technological advances, however, have enabled the development of new integrated circuit (IC) architectures relying on multiple chiplets and more sophisticated electronic components. Intel Corporation played a crucial role in these developments, by introducing new architectures and specifications for the design of systems with multiple packaged chiplets.

Researchers at Intel Corporation Santa Clara recently outlined a new vision for further boosting the performance of systems developed following universal chiplet interconnect express (UCIe), a specification to standardize the connections between multi-function chiplets in modern System-in-Package (SiP). Their proposed approach, presented in a paper in Nature Electronics, entails reducing the frequency in these circuits to boost their power efficiency and performance.

Largely thanks to advances in semiconductor technology, a measure called energy-efficient performance is on track to triple every two years (EEP units are 1/femtojoule-picoseconds).

In particular, the EEP increase will be enabled by the advanced packaging technologies we’ve been discussing here. Additionally, concepts such as system-technology co-optimization (STCO), where the different functional parts of a GPU are separated onto their own chiplets and built using the best performing and most economical technologies for each, will become increasingly critical.

A new study by Hebrew University has made a significant breakthrough by successfully incorporating single-photon sources into small chips that operate at room temperature. This development marks a crucial progress in the field of quantum photonics, opening up possibilities for its use in quantum computing and cryptography. It represents a key achievement in creating usable quantum photonic devices, signaling an optimistic outlook for the complete realization of quantum technologies, including computing, communication, and sensing.

A recent study, spearheaded by Boaz Lubotzky during his Ph.D. research, along with Prof. Ronen Rapaport from the Racah Institute of Physics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in collaboration with teams from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the USA and from Ulm University in Germany, unveiled a significant advancement toward the on-chip integration of single-photon sources at room temperature. This achievement represents a significant step forward in the field of quantum photonics and holds promise for various applications including quantum computing, cryptography, and sensing.

This lightning-quick tech may redefine efficiency.

Future quantum computers could be based on electrons floating above liquid helium, according to study by a RIKEN physicist and collaborators, appearing in Physical Review Applied.

In this podcast, we chat with Simeon Bamford, who’s currently working on tactile neuromorphic sensors, about creating circuits to perform functions lost to brain damage, Bamford’s involvement with the commercialization of dynamic vision sensors and more.

Quantum computers will break encryption one day. But converting data into light particles and beaming them around using thousands of satellites might be one way around this problem.

Scientists have created an n-channel transistor using diamond for the first time, potentially leading to faster components that can work in extreme conditions.

A new fabrication process that could be used to build a quantum computer achieves an almost zero failure rate and has the potential to be scaled up, according to new research from engineers and physicists at UCL.