Lifeboat Foundation

Eurolab HPC tries to assess the future disruptive technology for high performance computing beyond Exascale computers.

They survey the currents state of research and development and its potential for the future of the following hardware technologies:

CMOS scaling
Die stacking and 3D chip technologies
Non-volatile Memory (NVM) technologies
Photonics
Resistive Computing
Neuromorphic Computing
Quantum Computing
Nanotubes
Graphene and
Diamond Transistors

Continue reading “Beyond Exaflop supercomputers will require new materials, new architectures, new memory and quantum computers” »

The unparalleled possibilities of quantum computers are currently still limited because information exchange between the bits in such computers is difficult, especially over larger distances. FOM workgroup leader Lieven Vandersypen and his colleagues within the QuTech research centre and the Kavli Institute for Nanosciences (Delft University of Technology) have succeeded for the first time in enabling two non-neighbouring quantum bits in the form of electron spins in semiconductors to communicate with each other. They publish their research on 10 October in Nature Nanotechnology.

Information exchange is something that we scarcely think about these days. People constantly communicate via e-mails, mobile messaging applications and phone calls. Technically, it is the bits in those various devices that talk to each other. “For a normal computer, this poses absolutely no problem,” says professor Lieven Vandersypen. “However, for the quantum computer – which is potentially much faster than the current computers – that information exchange between quantum bits is very complex, especially over long distances.”

Mediating with quantum dots Artist impression of two electron spins that talk to each other via a ‘quantum mediator’. The two electrons are each trapped in a semiconductor nanostructure (quantum dot). The two spins interact, and this interaction is mediated by a third, empty quantum dot in the middle. In the future, coupling over larger distances can be achieved using other objects in between to mediate the interaction. This will allow researchers to create two-dimensional networks of coupled spins, that act as quantum bits in a future quantum computer. Copyright: Tremani/TU Delft.

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In Brief.

• Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa will share the prize for their design and synthesis of the ‘world’s smallest machines.’
• The state of molecular machines today is at the same level as that of the electric motor in the 1830’

A trio of European scientists brought home the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa were awarded 8 million Swedish krona for their work on molecular machines.

Continue reading “Nanomachines Score The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry” »

Three pioneers in the development of nanomachines, made of moving molecules, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday.

Bernard Feringa was the first person to develop a molecular motor; in 1999 he got a molecular rotor blade to spin continually in the same direction. Using molecular motors, he has rotated a glass cylinder that is 10,000 times bigger than the motor and also designed a nanocar.

A tiny lift, artificial muscles and miniscule motors. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 is awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa for their design and production of molecular machines. They have developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added.

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You really have to wonder sometimes.

THE futuristic world depicted in the classic science-fiction film Fantastic Voyage, starring Raquel Welch in a very clingy catsuit, could very soon be a reality as scientists have discovered a way of shrinking vehicles that could be placed inside the human body.

The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to scientists based in the US, France, and the Netherlands for breakthroughs in designing molecular machines that can carry out tasks— and even mimic a four-wheel-drive car — when given a jolt of energy.

Winners J. Fraser Stoddart, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, and Bernard L. Feringa discovered how to build tiny motors — 1,000 times thinner than a strand of hair.

The machinery includes rings on axles, spinning blades, and even unimaginably small creations consisting of only a few molecules that can lift themselves off a surface like tiny robots rising on tip-toe. Those molecular robots can pluck, grasp, and connect individual amino acids. The machines can also be used as a novel mechanism of drug delivery.

What are the potential uses for molecular machines, which have won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Though they’re touted as ideal for electronics, two-dimensional materials like graphene may be too flat and hard to stretch to serve in flexible, wearable devices. “Wavy” borophene might be better, according to Rice University scientists.

The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and experimental collaborators observed examples of naturally undulating, metallic borophene, an atom-thick layer of boron, and suggested that transferring it onto an elastic surface would preserve the material’s stretchability along with its useful electronic properties.

Highly conductive graphene has promise for flexible electronics, Yakobson said, but it is too stiff for devices that also need to stretch, compress or even twist. But borophene deposited on a silver substrate develops nanoscale corrugations. Weakly bound to the silver, it could be moved to a flexible surface for use.

(Phys.org)—Researchers have used the pressure of light—also called optical forces or sometimes “tractor beams”—to create a new type of rewritable, dynamic 3D holographic material. Unlike other 3D holographic materials, the new material can be rapidly written and erased many times, and can also store information without using any external energy. The new material has potential applications in 3D holographic displays, large-scale volumetric data storage devices, biosensors, tunable lasers, optical lenses, and metamaterials.

The research was conducted by a multidisciplinary team led by Yunuen Montelongo at Imperial College London and Ali K. Yetisen at Harvard University and MIT. In recent papers published in Nature Communications and Applied Physics Letters, the researchers demonstrated the reversible optical manipulation of nanostructured materials, which they used to fabricate active 3D holograms, lenses, and memory devices.

The key to creating the 3D holographic material with these advantages was to use optical forces to reversibly modify the material’s properties. The optical forces are produced by the interference of two or more laser beams, which creates an optical pressure capable of moving nanoscale structures. So far, optical forces have mainly been used for just one application: optical tweezers, which can hold and move tiny objects and are mostly used in biological applications.

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