The 10 Coolest Technologies You've Never Heard
Of.
Taken from the August 8 issue of PC Magazine. For more information
go to www.go.pcmag.com/futuretech
Stretchable Silicone
A transistor is made in the usual manner, then an ultra thin layer,
containing the entire transistor, is deposited on stretched rubber where it
will bond. The rubber is released and the transistor buckles. It
can be stretched back as needed. This could be used for wearable
electronics with the first applications being in medicine. This was
developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, they have started
a spin-off company called Printable Silicone Technologies.
Chaos Computing
The Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida is
exploiting the principle of chaos to build chips that are faster and cheaper.
The chips will be similar in concept to stem cells in that they can assume all
sorts of different functions. The chips can change from calculators to
storage to CPU as needed by the application. They have started a company,
ChaoLogix, and expect to have a demonstration chip next year.
Unreal Telepresence
Researchers at UC San Diego Institute for Telecommunications and
Information Technology in life-size video conferencing which is virtually
undetectable from reality. It will have a wall size display and require the internet to be 500 to 5000
times faster than it is now.
Nanocrystal Displays
Tiny materials that emit colored light will increase manufacturing
efficiency for any size display. The process of placing them on a display
could work much like an ink jet printer. Nanosys, a Silicone Valley
company, has been patening the technology and has a long term agreement with
Sharp to develop future displays. Other application, could include
medical, solar cells and flexible displays.
Multitouch Displays
At NYU they are developing a way to let every place on a touch screen to be
active. "You'll be able to use one finger to move an image around the
screen, another to magnify and another to rotate it; all at the same time.
(Have you seen the BofA commercial on TV?)
Transparent Transistors
Oregon State University has developed and HP licensed the first transparent
transistor. This will allow displays to be virtually anywhere, just like
in the movies. (Pop up ads may be a big negative.)
Silicon Brains
IBM is working on a computer based complete human brain. They are
starting with the neocortex which is unique to mammals. They hope it will
teach us how thought, memory, and perception work. It could be
used in future robots which could then give humanlike responses.
Bacterial Photography
Using E coli bacteria, researchers at UCSF have developed a biological
light sensor. At present it is only monochrome, but is super high
resolution, ten time more than is available today.
Tritium Batteries
NSF is funding BetaBatt a Houston based company which is developing a
battery which will never, or almost never, need recharging. It is based
on the decay of the hydrogen isotope tritium. The half-life is
12.3 years, i.e. the battery will be down to half power after 12.3 years, one
tenth power after 40 years.
Viral Fashon
The Media Lab at MIT is developing clothing on which patterns and designs
can change according to the wearer's whim. A T-shirt could be solid one
time and striped the next. These digital images could be transmitted
wirelessly. You could absorb fashion from the person near you, or
subscribe to a designers feed.
History Lessons
In September 1956 IBM introduced the first disk drive the IBM 350 Disk File,
which was part of the RAMAC 350. There were fifty 24-inch platters,
spinning at 1200 rpm, weighing 2,150 pounds, it held 5 megabytes and cost about
$10,000,000 per gigabyte. Today's 2.5 inch disk drives hold up to 160 GB.
In the last 50 years aerial density, data per square inch, has increased by a
factor of 50 million. Today we pay about 50 cents per gigabyte.
Around 3 billion disk drives were shipped in the last 50 years, the next 3
billion will ship in the next five years. By the end of this year we
are expecting to see a 300 GB holographic disc, it will be the size of a CD.
The increase in processor speed is equally interesting.
| Intel 8088 | Intel Core 2 Extreme | |
| Introduced | June 1, 1979 | July 27, 2006 |
| Clock Speed | 5 MHz | 29,300 MHz |
| Transistors | 29,000 | 291,000,000 |
| Transistor Size | 3 microns | 0.065 microns |
| Bus Width | 8 bits | 128 Bits |