Recession suddenly humbles high-tech sector

The $1.6 million red Bugatti crouches in the showroom, flanked by Lamborghinis, Bentleys and a Rolls-Royce all polished to a shimmer. The nearby potted plants, however, are dusty and wilting. With super-luxury car sales here just half of what they used to be, they had to cut something.

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Silly video infuriates Internet

It's so rare in this day and age that one has the opportunity to use “irony” in its true sense.

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IBM Has Greener Way to Reuse Silicon

IBM Corp. says it has developed a greener method for recycling precious silicon that is wasted during computer chip manufacturing.

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Silicon 'Lego bricks' used to build 3D chips

Pyramid-shaped teeth around the edges of one piece of silicon (seen under an electron microscope) fit neatly into a matching set of holes on another (Image:Southampton University)

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Silicon retina mimics biology for a clearer view

The top image shows the raw output of the retina chip, the middle one a picture processed from it and the third shows how a moving face would appear (Image: Zaghloul/Boahen/IOP)

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Laser-making chip promises data transfer boost

A silicon-based microchip that generates laser beams has been developed by researchers at Intel and the University of California, Santa Barbara, both in the US.

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Researchers have demonstrated a "time telescope" that could squeeze much more information into the data packets sent around the internet. Rather than focusing information-carrying light pulses in space, like a normal lens, it focuses them in time.

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the world will be changed by the ability to routinely read genetic sequences into computing systems and then store, replicate, alter and insert them back into living cells. More Articles

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Each emitter works a bit like an tiny particle accelerator: The anode of the emitter charges the nanoparticles, which are then accelerated and then shot out a tube by a strong magnetic field generated by a stack of microchip-like components.

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Low cost solar energy: thanks to organic solar cells

Cost has been the main factor inhibiting large scale use of solar energy, an abundant and clean form of energy. A large portion of this cost goes for solar panels that contain photovoltaic cells necessary for converting the sun's energy into a usable form (electricity.)

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Sencera has deposited single-junction silicon solar cells with an initial 8.7 percent sunlight to electricity conversion efficiency under standard test conditions.

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Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories, in Livermore, CA, have created the first carbon-nanotube devices that can detect the entire visible spectrum of light.

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"Calling it "a compelling manifesto," Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network on Friday released a green vision for the region that says a private-public partnership focused on alternative energy and energy efficiency will lead to economic recovery and growth.

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Reports of the imminent death of Moore's law have been around almost as long as the law itself, and have always proved exaggerated. But now there is concrete cause for concern. The smallest features on today's state-of-the-art chips are just a few nanometres across.

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"There is a major problem that plagues photovoltaic solar panel production - its high cost.

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Hoping to accelerate the development of 450-mm fabs, International Sematech and others have formulated a preliminary standard for 450-mm silicon wafers. But the 450-mm era could get delayed amid the IC downturn and current economic crisis.

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Footprints in Silicon

We are used to finding sand on beaches and dunes, and we are just as used to seeing our footprints as we playfully flirt with the idea of entering the water or rolling down the dune. Inside our computers lies a processor which is comprised of the same stuff most sand is, silicon.

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Intel has signed a deal with Yahoo to enhance the way people use their TVs by adding internet applications. The collaboration will produce a Widget Channel that lets viewers e-mail friends, trade shares or check the weather while watching programmes. More Articles

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The road to a faster Internet, data center, and personal computer is paved with silicon. Or so believe researchers at Intel who have unveiled a test chip--made entirely from silicon--that can encode 200 gigabits of data per second on a beam of light.

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Who doesn't dream of increasingly fast computers that consume less and less energy? To design these computers of the future, it is important to be able to control nanoscale strain in the processors. Until now, this strain remained difficult to observe.

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The consequences of a silicon shortage are limiting the growth of the industry. At some point over the next five years, the solar panel industry will overtake the chip sector.

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As digital TV starts to deploy, there have been several announcements recently for silicon TV tuners that focus on terrestrial broadcast and cable set-top box applications, rather than on the more ethereal mobile TV that has been touted as the next killer application for handheld …

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The sun blasts Earth with enough energy in one hour—4.3 x 1020 joules—to provide all of humanity's energy needs for a year (4.1 x 1020 joules), according to physicist Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

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Researchers have built the world's smallest transistor - one atom thick and 10 atoms wide - out of a material that could one day replace silicon.

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The silicon chip, which has supplied several decades' worth of remarkable increases in computing power and speed, looks unlikely to be capable of sustaining this pace for more than another decade -- in fact, in a plenary talk at the conference, Suman Datta of Pennsylvania State U …

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They have a beautiful farm, a prosperous business and spend their days making sex toys together. Life is bliss for the Happy Valley partners

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There was a time when humans believed that they could never walk on the moon. There were times when they believed they could not make machines fly... but now, such things are so obvious for us.

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Two teams of US scientists have demonstrated silicon-based 'thermoelectric' materials that could convert waste heat back into electricity - potentially giving a boost to the efficiency of everything from power stations to refrigerators.

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"Sixty years ago three scientists in the US invented the transistor - the tiny switches at the heart of all silicon chips. "Now they are found in everything from cars and aircraft to MP3 players and mobile phones....

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In the hip science of ultrasmall nanotechnology, fantastical future possibilities like rampaging nanorobots capture the most attention, but the first fruits of the field have been more mundane: tiny bits of mostly ordinary stuff that just sit there...

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