COMPUTING

Never content to let a paradigm remain a paradigm, DARPA has issued a broad agency announcement seeking the development of super-low-power, non-volatile logic integrated circuits that retain their computational states as well as their data even after their power supplies have been removed. Focusing on magnetic-moment-based approaches, the agency wants a new breed of portable electronics, sensors and UAVs that can compute even when the lights go out.

Apple aficionados and first-adopters will have to wait a bit longer than anticipated to get their hot hands on the iPad. The tablet computer's debut has been moved back to April 3 for the U.S., AP reports.

Graphene may brighten the future more literally than we had originally anticipated, besides merely revolutionizing electronics and Silicon Valley. Swedish and American researchers have transformed the one-atom-thick carbon material into a new, inexpensive lighting component that could give organic light diodes (OLEDs) a run for their money.

Silicon Valley may want to update its name, because IBM has created graphene transistors that blow away the silicon competition. The transistor prototypes were made from sheets of carbon just one atom thick that could switch on and off at 100 billion times per second. The 100-gigahertz speed is about 10 times faster than any silicon equivalents, Technology Review reports.

As technological tensions run high between the U.S. and China these days (see Google's recent dust-up with the party, etc.), the People’s Republic has unveiled more details on its quest to phase U.S.-made processors from its microchip diet. China’s next supercomputer – a Linux-running machine known as the Dawning 6000 – will run purely on Chinese processors, possibly before the end of this year.

Researchers at Harvard and the University of Queensland have come up with a novel, just-crazy-enough-to-work method for modeling and simulating quantum systems: use a quantum computer. Employing the superior computing power of a custom-built quantum computing system, the researchers were able to determine the precise energy of molecular hydrogen for the first time, an impossible feat using classical computing methods. By doing so, they've opened the box on what could be a computing breakthrough stretching across disciplines.

A computer chip using nanotube circuitry can run much faster than a regular silicon chip, for a fraction of the cost, but no one has been able to effectively string together two nanotube transistors, let alone the thousands needed for a chip. Until now: researchers at Stanford University have built the first nanotube circuits, by stamping multiple layers of nanotubes on top of one another.

Most people use the video camera on their phone for bootlegging concert footage or recording drunken antics. But for the deaf, to whom cellphones' audio capability is moot, cellphone video offers a chance to expand beyond texting, and into the more expressive communication of American Sign Language. Unfortunately, low-bandwidth American cellphone lines can't carry video clear enough for sign language.

That's where MobileASL comes in. This multi-university project developed a special algorithm that selectively compresses the video, lowering the resolution on everything but the speakers hands. This lowers the size of the video to the point where it can pass over regular cellphone signals. And now, the MobileASL project has developed the first prototype phone that incorporates this technology.

If you're like me, the lack of computing power in your T-shirt causes constant problems. Well, thanks to the guys over at Xerox, you'll never have to worry about a jacket that can't run Windows 7 ever again. The company has just announced a new process for creating an ink that doubles as a circuit, paving the way for ubiquitous computing through printable electronics.

A digital revolution in past years has gradually unlocked movies and television shows from their traditional formats. Now Disney wants to take things a step further and update the idea of media ownership. Their plan would give owners an access code that allows them to view their entertainment on any number of platforms and gadgets.

Japanese researchers have developed a new diode that only transmits heat currents in one direction, and they think it could represent a new future for thermal computing.

Similar work has succeeded with individual electrons in superconductors and in lone nanotubes, according to Technology Review. But this represents the first time anyone has managed the trick in a bulk solid, which in this case consists of two types of perovskite cobalt oxides.

Physicists from the University of Queensland have found the emerging field of quantum computing may be more stable than previously thought.

Dr Tom Stace, from UQ's School of Mathematics and Physics, has studied the effect of errors in quantum computers and found with even 50 percent loss of components it could still work.

The theoretical research done with Dr Andrew Doherty from UQ and Dr Sean Barrett from Macquarie University, was recently published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

Are you reading this on your laptop? Are you ready to roll that laptop up and put it in your pocket? As we told you the other day, scientists revealed flexible coatings filled with e-ink that will turn just about any surface into a screen. Now other components of computers are breaking free from their silicon backbones and getting stretched. Next up: memory chips.

At 8 a.m. on May 4, 2001, anyone trying to access the White House Web site got an error message. By noon, whitehouse.gov was down entirely, the victim of a so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Somewhere in the world, hackers were pinging White House servers with thousands of page requests per second, clogging the site. Also attacked were sites for the U.S. Navy and various other federal departments.

It’s been a while but the Mac Pro and Mac Mini have finally been updated and the insides are now rather juicy. Unfortunately, the external appearance is exactly the same. That’s not to say they don’t look good, it just means that while the laptops and iMacs have gone for the new black/aluminium look, the Mini and Pro retain the aluminium only look.