Computer learns language by playing games

One test might be whether the computer could analyze and follow a set of instructions for an unfamiliar task. And indeed, in the last few years, researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab have begun designing machine-learning systems that do exactly that, with surprisingly good results.

In 2009, at the annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), researchers in the lab of Regina Barzilay, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, took the best-paper award for a system that generated scripts for installing a piece of software on a Windows computer by reviewing instructions posted on Microsoft's help site. At this year's ACL meeting, Barzilay, her graduate student S. R. K. Branavan and David Silver of University College London applied a similar approach to a more complicated problem: learning to play "Civilization," a computer game in which the player guides the development of a city into an empire across centuries of human history. When the researchers augmented a machine-learning system so that it could use a player's manual to guide the development of a game-playing strategy, its rate of victory jumped from 46 percent to 79 percent.

Starting from scratch

"Games are used as a test bed for artificial-intelligence techniques simply because of their complexity," says Branavan, who was first author on both ACL papers. "Every action that you take in the game doesn't have a predetermined outcome, because the game or the opponent can randomly react to what you do. So you need a technique that can handle very complex scenarios that react in potentially random ways."

Moreover, Barzilay says, game manuals have "very open text. They don't tell you how to win. They just give you very general advice and suggestions, and you have to figure out a lot of other things on your own." Relative to an application like the software-installing program, Branavan explains, games are "another step closer to the real world."

The extraordinary thing about Barzilay and Branavan's system is that it begins with virtually no prior knowledge about the task it's intended to perform or the language in which the instructions are written. It has a list of actions it can take, like right-clicks or left-clicks, or moving the cursor; it has access to the information displayed on-screen; and it has some way of gauging its success, like whether the software has been installed or whether it wins the game. But it doesn't know what actions correspond to what words in the instruction set, and it doesn't know what the objects in the game world represent.

So initially, its behavior is almost totally random. But as it takes various actions, different words appear on screen, and it can look for instances of those words in the instruction set. It can also search the surrounding text for associated words, and develop hypotheses about what actions those words correspond to. Hypotheses that consistently lead to good results are given greater credence, while those that consistently lead to bad results are discarded.

Proof of concept

In the case of software installation, the system was able to reproduce 80 percent of the steps that a human reading the same instructions would execute. In the case of the computer game, it won 79 percent of the games it played, while a version that didn't rely on the written instructions won only 46 percent. The researchers also tested a more-sophisticated machine-learning algorithm that eschewed textual input but used additional techniques to improve its performance. Even that algorithm won only 62 percent of its games.

"If you'd asked me beforehand if I thought we could do this yet, I'd have said no," says Eugene Charniak, University Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. "You are building something where you have very little information about the domain, but you get clues from the domain itself."

Charniak points out that when the MIT researchers presented their work at the ACL meeting, some members of the audience argued that more sophisticated machine-learning systems would have performed better than the ones to which the researchers compared their system. But, Charniak adds, "it's not completely clear to me that that's really relevant. Who cares? The important point is that this was able to extract useful information from the manual, and that's what we care about."

Most computer games as complex as "Civilization" include algorithms that allow players to play against the computer, rather than against other people; the games' programmers have to develop the strategies for the computer to follow and write the code that executes them. Barzilay and Branavan say that, in the near term, their system could make that job much easier, automatically creating algorithms that perform better than the hand-designed ones.

But the main purpose of the project, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, was to demonstrate that computer systems that learn the meanings of words through exploratory interaction with their environments are a promising subject for further research. And indeed, Barzilay and her students have begun to adapt their meaning-inferring algorithms to work with robotic systems.

Computer learns language by playing games

Brainy lizards pass test for birds

A Duke University experiment tested Puerto Rican anoles on several cognitive tasks and found they can learn and remember to solve a problem they've never faced before. The results challenge the scientific stereotype that reptiles have limited cognitive abilities and methods for finding food.

The lizards' success on a worm-based test normally used on birds was "completely unexpected," said Duke biologist Manuel Leal, who led the study.

He tested the lizards using a wooden block with two wells, one that was empty and one that held a worm but was covered by a cap. Four lizards, two male and two female, passed the test by either biting the cap or bumping it out of the way.

The lizards solved the problem in three fewer attempts than birds need to flip the correct cap and pass the test, Leal said. Birds usually get up to six chances a day, but lizards only get one chance per day because they eat less. In other words, if a lizard makes a mistake, it has to remember how to correct it until the next day, Leal said. He and Duke graduate student Brian Powell describe the experiment and results online in Biology Letters.

Leal's experiment "clearly demonstrates" that when faced with a situation the lizards had never experienced, most of them were able to devise a way to solve the problem. Their ability to "unlearn" a behavior, a skill that some mammalian species have difficulty in, is the mark of a cognitively advanced animal, said Jonathan Losos, a biologist at Harvard who was not involved in the study.

The results "should cause researchers to re-evaluate what they think they know about the evolution of animal cognition," Losos said.

Leal tested the cognition of the Puerto Rican anole, Anolis evermanni, after seeing sparrows flip a cap to get a worm and wondering if lizards could do the trick, too.

"They'd put their snout under the little plastic chip and then quickly bump it," Leal said. "They don't do this in the wild."

Even when Leal covered both wells, the lizards chose to flip the cap covering the well with the worm. They had learned to associate the color or brightness of the chip with their reward.

To see if the lizards could reverse this association, Leal next placed the worm under the other cap. At first, all the lizards bumped or bit the formerly lucrative blue cap. But after a few mistakes, two of the lizards figured out the trick. "We named these two Plato and Socrates," Leal said.

The lizards' performance doesn't necessarily mean that reptiles are smarter than birds, said McGill University biologist Louis Lefebvre, who studies learning and behavior in birds and was not involved in the new study. He said a better way to use these new results would be to compare cognitive abilities among reptile species, rather than between reptiles, birds and mammals.

"We know birds and mammals have bigger brains and that within bird species and within mammal species, the bigger the brain is, the higher the chance of that larger-brained species making it when moving to a new environment," Lefebvre said. "It may be the same with lizards."

Research has shown that large-brained lizards are better than small-brained lizards at colonizing new areas. "My guess would be that the lizard genus in which Manuel Leal has shown fast learning would be among the larger-brained lizards," Lefebvre said.

Compared to other lizards, anoles are better at exploiting diverse habitats and they exhibit complex behavior, factors that may favor the evolution of higher-level mental processing. The lizards' ability to perform on the lab tests may also be an indication of the traits that allowed the group to successfully spread across the tropics, Leal said.

He plans to test other species of lizards and compare their brain to body size later this year.

Brainy lizards pass test for birds

Ancient algae: Genetically engineering a path to new energy sources?

Tom Niehaus, completing his doctorate in the Chappell laboratory; Shigeru Okada, a sabbatical professor from the aquatic biosciences department at the University of Tokyo; Tim Devarenne, a UK graduate and now professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M University; and UK colleagues, Chappell, David Watt, professor of cellular and molecular biochemistry (College of Medicine) and his post-doctoral associate Vitaliy Sviripa report their latest research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Their findings go well beyond the basic science dealing with the origins of oil and coal.

While scientists previously established that oil and coal have their roots in the organisms that lived on the planet over 500 million years ago, one micro-organism directly contributed to these natural resources. That organism is a species of algae called Botryococcus braunii, which left behind its chemical fingerprints -- an oil that over geological time has turned into oil and coal shale deposits.

"Even more exciting is that this unique alga, B. braunii, still exists today and has been the target of studies from the large chemical and petrochemical industries," said Chappell.

B. braunii are very slow growing algae, so the organism is not necessarily a good source for biofuels. However, if scientists can capture its genetic blueprints for the biosynthesis of these high value oils, then these genes could be used to generate alternative production platforms.

This team of investigators isolated the necessary genes, characterized the biochemical traits encoded by these genes, and then genetically engineered yeast to produce this very high-value oil. This work has provided the first example of recreating a true direct replacement for oil and coal shale deposits.

Chappell said, "This represents the culmination of an outstanding effort to understand a fundamental process that has direct ramifications for a real-world problem -- how are we going to generate a truly renewable biofuel supply?"

Devarenne added, "This study identifies a very remarkable molecular mechanism for the production of hydrocarbons that, as far as we can tell, is not found in any other organism. Thus, it offers a unique insight into how hydrocarbons were produced hundreds of millions of years ago."

Ancient algae: Genetically engineering a path to new energy sources?

Bodyguard for the brain: Researchers identify mechanism that seems to protect brain from aging

The research results are presented in a current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Humans are getting older and older, and the number of people with dementia is increasing. The factors controlling degeneration of the brain are still mostly unknown. However, researchers assume that factors such as stress, accumulation of toxic waste products as well as inflammation accelerate aging. But, vice versa, there are also mechanisms that can -- like a bodyguard -- protect the brain from degenerating, or repair defective structures.

Researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Mainz have now discovered a hitherto unknown function of the cannabinoid-1 receptor (CB1). A receptor is a protein that can bind to other substances, triggering a chain of signals. Cannabinoids such as THC -- the active agent in cannabis sativa -- and endocannabinoids formed by the body bind to the CB1 receptors. The existence of this receptor is also the reason for the intoxicating effect of hashish and marijuana.

Not only does the CB1 receptor have an addictive potential, but it also plays a role in the degeneration of the brain. "If we switch off the receptor using gene technology, mouse brains age much faster," said Önder Albayram, principal author of the publication and a doctoral student on the team of Professor Dr. Andreas Zimmer from the Institut für Molekulare Psychiatrie at the University of Bonn. "This means that the CB1 signal system has a protective effect for nerve cells."

Mice prove their brain power in a pool

The researchers studied mice in different age categories -- young six week old animals, middle-aged ones at five months, and those of an advanced age at 12 months. The animals had to master various tasks -- first, they had to find a submerged platform in the pool. Once the mice knew its location, the platform was moved, and the animals had to find it again. This was how the researchers tested how well the rodents learned and remembered.

The animals in which the CB1 receptor had been switched off (the knock-out mice) clearly differed from their kind. "The knock-out mice showed clearly diminished learning and memory capacity," said Privatdozent Dr. Andras Bilkei-Gorzo from Professor Zimmer's team, who led the study. So, animals that did not have the receptor were less successful in their search for the platform. "In addition, they showed a clear loss of nerve cells in the hippocampus," he explained further. This part of the brain is the central area for forming and storing information. In addition, the researchers found inflammation processes in the brain. As the mice advanced in age, the degenerative processes became increasingly noticeable.

Amazing parallels with the human brain

The animals with the intact CB1 receptor, to the contrary, did clearly better with regard to their learning and memory capabilities, as well as the health of their nerve cells. "The root cause of aging is one of the secrets of life," commented Albayram. This study has begun to open the door to solving this enigma. The processes in the mouse brains have a surprising number of parallels with age-related changes in human brains. So, the endocannabinoid system may also present a protective mechanism in the aging of the human brain.

The principal author cautioned, "This will require additional research." The scientists would like to better understand the mechanism by which CB1 receptors protect the brain from inflammation processes. And based on these signal chains, it might then be possible to develop substances for new therapies.

Bodyguard for the brain: Researchers identify mechanism that seems to protect brain from aging

Biologists identify new strategy used by bacteria during infection

Zhao-Qing Luo, the associate professor of biological sciences who led the study, said the team discovered a new enzyme used by the bacterium Legionella pneumophila -- which causes Legionnaires' disease -- to control its host cell in order to take up residence.

"Legionnaires' disease is a severe form of pneumonia, and this finding could lead to the design of a new therapy that saves lives," Luo said. "At the same time it also provides great insight into a general mechanism of both bacterial infection and cell signaling events in higher organisms including humans."

Successful infection by Legionella pneumophila requires the delivery of hundreds of proteins into the host cells that alter various functions to turn the naturally hostile environment into one tailor-made for bacterial replication. These proteins tap into existing communication processes within the cells in which an external signal, such as a hormone, triggers a cascade of slight modifications to proteins that eventually turns on a gene that changes the cell's behavior, he said.

"Pathogens are successful because they know how information in our cells is relayed and they amplify some signals and block others in order to evade the immune system and keep the cell from defending itself," Luo said. "Despite our understanding of this, we do not know much about how the proteins delivered by the bacteria accomplish this -- how they work. This time we were able to pinpoint an enzyme and see how it disrupted and manipulated a specific signaling pathway in order to create a better environment for itself."

The signaling pathway involved was only recently identified, and the discovery by Luo and graduate student Yunhao Tan also provides a key insight into its process. A paper detailing their National Institutes of Health-funded work is published online in the current issue of the journal Nature.

The signaling pathway involves a new form of protein modification called AMPylation in order to relay instructions to change cell behavior and has been found to be used by almost all organisms, Luo said.

The bacterial enzyme discovered by the Purdue team, named SidD, reverses or stops the AMPylation process, he said.

"It had not been known before if the AMPylation signaling process was reversible or if it was regulated by specific enzymes," Luo said. "Now we know that it is, and we have a more complete picture that will allow us to use it as a scientific tool to learn more about complex cellular processes. By being able to turn the signaling on and off, we can control different activities and detect mechanisms we wouldn't see under normal physiological conditions."

The bacterium affects the host cell's functions differently during different phases of the infection process, tapping into signaling pathways to turn on and off certain natural cellular activities. SidD stops the AMPylation process four hours after the start of infection in order to reverse an earlier modification that would be detrimental to the cell if left in place, he said.

"During its process of infection, the bacteria can trigger reactions that can lead to the death of the host cell," Luo said. "Of course this is not in the best interest of the bacteria because it would no longer be able to replicate and continue infection, so it has evolved mechanisms to neutralize such reactions and keep the host cell alive."

Luo said further investigation of the structure and function of the SidD enzyme is needed to better understand its role in the infection process and its involvement in other cellular processes.

"The more we can learn about an infectious agent, the better equipped we will be to design a therapy to fight it," he said. "Before a new antibiotic therapy can be created, we must understand the enzyme enough to find chemicals to inhibit its activity. Further, because the bacteria have coevolved with us for millions of years, they provide some of the best tools for us to understand the intricacy of cellular processes."

Luo plans to further study SidD and investigate other proteins used by Legionella pneumophila bacteria.

Biologists identify new strategy used by bacteria during infection

Bruce Diesen, semiconductor, market, WSTS, global, market Analyst sees soft June, lowers chip forecast

LONDON – The three-month average of global chip sales for June is going to be $24.6 billion, down compared with a figure of $25.03 billion reported for May by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization, according to Bruce Diesen, an analyst at Carnegie Group (Oslo, Norway).

This would also be down on the three-month average for June 2010 which would reflect that 2Q11 actual global chip sales are down on those of 2Q10. As a result Diesen is lowering his forecast for 2011 global chip market growth from 5 percent to 3 percent.

"PC, handset and TV sales are running slower than expected in 2011, and we now expect world semiconductor sales to rise 3 percent in US dollar terms in 2011, compared to our previous forecast of 5 percent. Sales of electronics have been particularly soft in the US and Europe. Nokia and Acer in particular have worked off excess inventories in Q2," Diesen said in a note to clients.

Mike Cowan is predicting that the June three-month average of global chip sales will be reported at $25.445 billion but with the caveat that this assumes "no (or minor) sales revisions for either April or May's previously published actual sales.

Recently WSTS has made a series of major and minor downward revisions to sales data from earlier in 2011. WSTS and SIA are expected to report the June averaged figure on about August 1.


Related links and articles:

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Japan 'actual' chip sales collapsed in AprilBruce Diesen, semiconductor, market, WSTS, global, market Analyst sees soft June, lowers chip forecast

Last dinosaur before mass extinction discovered

Researchers from Yale University discovered the fossilized horn of a ceratopsian -- likely a Triceratops, which are common to the area -- in the Hell Creek formation in Montana last year. They found the fossil buried just five inches below the K-T boundary, the geological layer that marks the transition from the Cretaceous period to the Tertiary period at the time of the mass extinction that took place 65 million years ago.

Since the impact hypothesis for the demise of the dinosaurs was first proposed more than 30 years ago, many scientists have come to believe the meteor caused the mass extinction and wiped out the dinosaurs, but a sticking point has been an apparent lack of fossils buried within the 10 feet of rock below the K-T boundary. The seeming anomaly has come to be known as the "three-meter gap." Until now, this gap has caused some paleontologists to question whether the non-avian dinosaurs of the era -- which included Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Torosaurus and the duckbilled dinosaurs -- gradually went extinct sometime before the meteor struck. (Avian dinosaurs survived the impact, and eventually gave rise to modern-day birds.)

"This discovery suggests the three-meter gap doesn't exist," said Yale graduate student Tyler Lyson, director of the Marmarth Research Foundation and lead author of the study, published online July 12 in the journal Biology Letters. "The fact that this specimen was so close to the boundary indicates that at least some dinosaurs were doing fine right up until the impact."

While the team can't determine the exact age of the dinosaur, Lyson said it likely lived tens of thousands to just a few thousand years before the impact. "This discovery provides some evidence that dinosaurs didn't slowly die out before the meteor struck," he said.

Eric Sargis, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and graduate student Stephen Chester discovered the ceratopsian last year while searching for fossilized mammals that evolved after the meteor impact. At first, Lyson said, the team thought it was buried within about three feet of the K-T boundary, but were surprised to learn just how close to the boundary -- and hence, how close in time to the impact -- it was. They sent soil samples to a laboratory to determine the exact location of the boundary, which is marked by the relative abundance of certain types of fossilized pollen and other geological indicators but is difficult to determine visually while in the field.

Because the dinosaur was buried in a mudstone floodplain, the team knew it hadn't been re-deposited from older sediments, which can sometimes happen when fossils are found in riverbeds that may have eroded and re-distributed material over time.

The team is now examining other fossil specimens that appear to be buried close to the K-T boundary and expect to find more, Lyson said. He suspects that other fossils discovered in the past may have been closer to the boundary than originally thought and that the so-called three-meter gap never existed.

"We should be able to verify that using the more sophisticated soil analysis technique rather than estimating the boundary's location based solely on a visual examination of the rock formations while in the field, which is what has typically been done in the past," Lyson said.

Other authors of the paper include Eric Sargis and Stephen Chester (Yale University); Antoine Bercovici (China University of Geosciences); Dean Pearson (Pioneer Trails Regional Museum) and Walter Joyce (University of Tübingen).

Last dinosaur before mass extinction discovered

Samsung, memory, ReRAM, semiconductor, flash Samsung reports trillion-cycle ReRAM

LONDON – Researchers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and the department of physics at Sejong University (Seoul, Korea) have reported on a non-volatile resistive RAM with a read-write endurance of more than one trillion cycles.

The passive switching memory is made using asymmetric Ta₂O_5−x/TaO_2−x bilayer structures and has 10-ns switching times, according to the authors of a paper published by Nature Materials.

The devices are of the metal-insulator-metal type with platinum electrodes and experimental results are reported for cell sizes from 50 microns by 50 microns down to 30-nm by 30-nm. The team also prepared samples with double stacked ReRAM cells with linear dimensions of about 90-nm to judge from a scaled scanning electron micrograph and reported on 10 by 10 cell arrays with cell dimensions of 30-nm by 30-nm. The measured activation energy of 1.47-eV provides an estimated retention of greater than 10 years at 85 degrees Celsius.

By combining two devices anti-serially, one above the other, the authors have also circumvented the known problem with cross-bar devices of stray leakage without the need for rectifying diodes or access transistors.

The authors claim to have reduced power consumption compared with other reported ReRAMs and that the high endurance and fast switching make the device suitable for use as working memory as a potential replacement for flash memory.


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Article in Nature Materials

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New material promises faster electronics

Converting Light into Electrical Signals

When data is transmitted by light pulses (for in stance in fiber optic cables) the pulses have to be converted back into electrical signals, which can be processed by a computer. This conversion of light into electrical current is possible due to the photoelectric effect, which was originally explained by Albert Einstein. In certain materials, light can cause electrons to leave their positions and travel through the material freely, whereby electrical current occurs. "Light detectors which convert light into electronic signals have been around for a long time. But when they are made of graphene, they react faster than most other materials could," Alexander Urich explains. He investigated the optical and electronic properties of graphene together with Thomas Müller and Professor Karl Unterrainer at TU Vienna.

Analysis using Ultra Short Laser Pulses

The scientists had already shown last year that graphene can convert light into electronic signals with remarkable speed. However, the reaction time of the material could not be determined -- the photoelectric effect in graphene is so fast that it just cannot be measured by the usual measuring methods. But now, sophisticated technological tricks could shed some light on the properties of graphene. At TU Vienna, laser pulses were fired at the graphene photo-detector in quick succession, and the resulting photo-current was measured. If the time delay between the laser pulses is changed, the detector's maximum frequency can be determined. "Using this method we could show that our detectors can be used up to a frequency of 262 GHz," Thomas Müller (TU Vienna) says. This corresponds to a theoretical upper bound for data transfer using graphene photo-detectors of more than 30 gigabytes per second. It has yet to be determined to what extent this is technically feasible, but this result clearly shows the remarkable capability of graphene and its potential for optoelectronic applications.

Fast Signals for Fast Electronics

The main reason for the fact that graphene-photodetectors can operate at such high frequencies is the short life-span of the charge carriers in graphene. The electrons which are removed from their fixed position and contribute to the electrical current settle down at another fixed position after a few picoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second, 10E-12 seconds). As soon as this happens, the graphene photodetector is ready for another light signal which frees new electrons, creating the next electrical signal. The fast reaction time of graphene is one more item on the list of remarkable properties of this material. In graphene, charge carriers can travel extremely far without being disturbed. It can absorb light in a huge spectral range, from infrared to visible light -- unlike standard semiconductors, which can only absorb a small part of the spectrum. In addition to this, graphene can conduct heat extremely well and has an exceptionally high breaking strength.

New material promises faster electronics

Kinnect, Microsoft, Robots, Gesture Robots get Kinect's 'eyes and ears'

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Microsoft Robotics has been giving away its free Robotics Developer Studio, complete with a 3D simulator, for the last six years, but without gaining much visibility.

Microsoft, however, is convinced that will change Wednesday (July 13th) when the company launches added services that allow users to plug the Kinect hands-free hardware--intended for gesture control of its Xbox gaming console--directly into any robot.

In essence, the Kinect will add eyes and ears to any robot, which can be controlled with sophisticated gesture recognition running on an embedded Windows based computer.

Microsoft’s Robotics Developer Studio users will not just have access raw data either, but will also be able to access all of Kinect's sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms that enable the Xbox to be controlled with gestures. In other words, now roboticists using the Robotics Developer Studio will be able to control their robotics with gestures.

"Kinect's SDK [software development kit] can now be used with our free Robotics Developer Studio to create natural user interfaces for robots with full access to Kinect smart routines like skeletal recognition," said Stathis Papaefstathiou, General Manager, Microsoft Robotics. "In addition, we know from our user base that Kinect can also be useful for autonomous navigation scenarios."

This fall, Papaefstathiou promises that his software development group will add new routines to directly support autonomous navigation tasks. Developers will also have access to the routines controlling the four-microphone array in the Kinect, including its sophisticated noise cancellation and beam steering operations.

While users are prohibited from developing commercial products with the Kinect SDK, non-profits will be able to add the navigation algorithms that enable robots to use Kinect to follow paths, plan routes and generally re-enact the types of behaviors that search-and-rescue robots can now only perform by remote control.

Last year Microsoft acquired the fabless chip maker, Canesta Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) which makes a chip-level pattern recognition engine. Canesta’s engine is said to outperform the PrimeSensor which Microsoft is currently licensing from PrimeSense Ltd. (Tel-Aviv, Israel) for its Kinect.

When Microsoft commercializes the Canesta-invented chip-level work-alike of the PrimeSensor, it will be able to downsize the foot-long Kinect to about a square centimeter, enabling tiny robots and other mobile devices, such as the Windows Phone, to perform sophisticated gesture recognition for natural user interfaces, autonomous navigation and many other tasks.

R2D2, here we come!



Kinnect, Microsoft, Robots, Gesture Robots get Kinect's 'eyes and ears'

Golden window electrodes developed for organic solar cells

This ultra-low thickness means that even at the current high gold price the cost of the gold needed to fabricate one square metre of this electrode is only around £4.5. It can also be readily recouped from the organic solar cell at the end of its life and since gold is already widely used to form reliable interconnects it is no stranger to the electronics industry.

Organic solar cells have long relied on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) coated glass as the transparent electrode, although this is largely due to the absence of a suitable alternative. ITO is a complex, unstable material with a high surface roughness and tendency to crack upon bending if supported on a plastic substrate. If that wasn't bad enough one of its key components, indium, is in short supply making it relatively expensive to use.

An ultra-thin film of air-stable metal like gold would offer a viable alternative to ITO, but until now it has not proved possible to deposit a film thin enough to be transparent without being too fragile and electrically resistive to be useful.

Now research led by Dr Ross Hatton and Professor Tim Jones in the University of Warwick 's department of Chemistry has developed a rapid method for the preparation of robust, ultra-thin gold films on glass. Importantly this method can be scaled up for large area applications like solar cells and the resulting electrodes are chemically very well-defined.

Dr Hatton says "This new method of creating gold based transparent electrodes is potentially widely applicable for a variety of large area applications, particularly where stable, chemically well-defined, ultra-smooth platform electrodes are required, such as in organic optoelectronics and the emerging fields of nanoelectronics and nanophotonics."

The paper documents the team's success in creating this simple, practical and effective method of depositing the films onto glass, and also reports how the optical properties can be fine tuned by perforating the film with tiny circular holes using something as simple as polystyrene balls. The University of Warwick research team has also had some early success in depositing ultra-thin gold films directly on plastic substrates, an important step towards realising the holy grail of truly flexible solar cells. This innovation is set to be exploited by Molecular Solar Ltd, a Warwick spinout company dedicated to commercialising the discoveries of its academic founders in the area of organic solar cells.

This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) / Advantage West Midlands Science City SCRA AM2 project, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Golden window electrodes developed for organic solar cells

Hynix, Toshiba, MRAM, JV, memory, semiconductor Hynix, Toshiba team up on MRAM

LONDON – Hynix Semiconductor Inc. and Toshiba Corp. have agreed to develop spin-transfer torque magnetoresistence RAMs together with both saying that the technology is an important next-generation non-volatile memory.

Once the technology development is completed the companies plan to form a joint venture to produce STT-MRAMs. As part of the strategic collaboration Hynix and Toshiba have extended their patent cross licensing.

MRAM is non-volatile memory, it is also power efficient and operates at ultra-high speed, the companies said in a joint statement. The initial applications for the technology are expected to be in mobile applications where power efficiency is highly valued.

The companies did not disclose what memory capacities they intend to manufacture first or a timetable for when they expect to be in commercial manufacturing.

Many established semiconductor companies have made MRAMs and it has also been the stimulus for spin-offs and startups including Everspin Technologies Inc. Grandis Inc. and Crocus Technology Inc. However, the commitment by two of the world's largest manufacturers of NAND flash and DRAM memory to MRAM marks a significant change. The highest capacity MRAMs on the the market are at about 16-Mbit which is considerably behind the 64-Gbit achieved with NAND flash memory using 20-nm class manufacturing processes. However, many developers are seeing MRAM as replacement for DRAM with the benefits of superior scaling and non-volatility.

Toshiba has reportedly said that a recently developed perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) device can be the basic element of gigabit SST-MRAMs that it would expect to be commercial within three or four years. Hynix and Toshiba said they are merging the necessary resources and expertise from the two companies to minimize risk and to accelerate the pace of MRAM commercialization.

"MRAM is a rare gem full of exciting properties, like ultra high-speed, low power consumption, and high capacity, and it will play the role of key factor in driving advances in memories. It will also be a perfect fit for growing consumer demand in more sophisticated smart phones. MRAM is our next growth platform," said Oh Chul Kwon, CEO of Hynix, in a statement.

"We believe that MRAM has huge potential as highly scalable non-volatile RAM," said Kiyoshi Kobayashi, corporate senior vice president of Toshiba Corp. and president and CEO of Toshiba's semiconductor and storage products subsidiary. "We will strongly promote initiatives in integration of storage solutions including MRAM, NAND, and HDD. The MRAM joint development program with Hynix is one of the key steps to support our efforts."


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At small scales, tug-of-war between electrons can lead to magnetism

The three physicists have proposed that it would be possible to create a quantum dot -- a kind of nanoparticle -- that is magnetic under surprising circumstances.

Magnetism is determined by a property all electrons possess: spin. Individual spins are akin to tiny bar magnets, which have north and south poles. Electrons can have an "up" or "down" spin, and a material is magnetic when most of its electrons have the same spin.

Mobile electrons can act as "magnetic messengers," using their own spin to align the spins of nearby atoms. If two mobile electrons with opposite spins are in an area, conventional wisdom says that their influences should cancel out, leaving a material without magnetic properties.

But the UB-South Dakota team has proposed that at very small scales, magnetism may be more nuanced than that. It is possible, the physicists say, to observe a peculiar form of magnetism in quantum dots whose mobile electrons have opposing spins.

In their Physical Review Letters article, the researchers describe a theoretical scenario involving a quantum dot that contains two free-floating, mobile electrons with opposite spins, along with manganese atoms fixed at precise locations within the quantum dot.

The quantum dot's mobile electrons act as "magnetic messengers," using their own spins to align the spins of nearby manganese atoms.

Under these circumstances, conventional thinking would predict a stalemate: Each mobile electron exerts an equal influence over spins of manganese atoms, so neither is able to "win."

Through complex calculations, however, Oszwaldowski, Zutic and Petukhov show that the quantum dot's two mobile electrons will actually influence the manganese spins differently.

That's because while one mobile electron prefers to stay in the middle of the quantum dot, the other prefers to locate further toward the edges. As a result, manganese atoms in different parts of the quantum dot receive different messages about which way to align their spins.

In the "tug-of-war" that ensues, the mobile electron that interacts more intensely with the manganese atoms "wins," aligning more spins and causing the quantum dot, as a whole, to be magnetic.

This prediction, if proven, could "completely alter the basic notions that we have about magnetic interactions," Zutic says.

"When you have two mobile electrons with opposite spins, the assumption is that there is a nice balance of up and down spins, and therefore, there is no magnetic message, or nothing that could be sent to align nearby manganese spins," he says. "But what we are saying is that it is actually a tug of war. The building blocks of magnetism are still mysterious and hold many surprises."

Scientists including UB Professor Athos Petrou, UB College of Arts and Sciences Dean Bruce McCombe and UB Vice President for Research Alexander Cartwright have demonstrated experimentally that in a quantum dot with just one mobile electron, the mobile electron will act as a magnetic messenger, robustly aligning the spins of adjacent manganese atoms.

Now, Petrou and his collaborators are interested in taking their research a step further and testing the tug-of-war prediction for two-electron quantum dots, Zutic says.

Zutic adds that learning more about magnetism is important as society continues to find novel uses for magnets, which could advance technologies including lasers, medical imaging devices and, importantly, computers.

He explains the promise of magnet- or spin-based computing technology -- called "spintronics" -- by contrasting it with conventional electronics. Modern, electronic gadgets record and read data as a blueprint of ones and zeros that are represented, in circuits, by the presence or absence of electrons. Processing information requires moving electrons, which consumes energy and produces heat.

Spintronic gadgets, in contrast, store and process data by exploiting electrons' "up" and "down" spins, which can stand for the ones and zeros devices read. Future energy-saving improvements in data processing could include devices that process information by "flipping" spin instead of shuttling electrons around.

Studying how magnetism works on a small scale is particularly important, Zutic says, because "we would like to pack more information into less space."

And, of course, unraveling the mysteries of magnetism is satisfying for other, simpler reasons.

"Magnets have been fascinating people for thousands of years," Zutic says. "Some of this fascination was not always related to how you can make a better compass or a better computer hard drive. It was just peculiar that you have materials that attract one another, and you wanted to know why."

Zutic's research on magnetism is funded by the Department of Energy, Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

At small scales, tug-of-war between electrons can lead to magnetism

IMEC, Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba, ReRAM, memory, semiconductor, flilament IMEC claims ReRAM filament breakthrough

LONDON – Nanoelectronics research institute IMEC has claimed to have made a breakthrough in the understanding of the physical nature of filaments in resistive RAM devices.

IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) has had a research project on ReRAM for some time working on metal-oxides and metal-chalcogenide mixes. In ReRAM, a dielectric, which is normally insulating, can be made conductive through a filament or conduction path formed by applying a sufficiently high voltage.

The research group said that it has established how the minimum achievable current after reset depends on the physical nature of the filament produced in a forming process, resulting in a method to predict the current from filament properties. IMEC claims that this knowledge will help in allowing filaments to be formed to create stable ReRAM devices.

IMEC did not state what materials or at what geometries and dimensions the work was done. IMEC said that the work had been done in collaboration with partners in its core CMOS programs which include Globalfoundries, Intel, Micron, Panasonic, Samsung, TSMC, Elpida, Hynix, Fujitsu and Sony.

As well as the scaling of metal-oxide ReRAMs to below 10-nm IMEC is investigating Mott transitions in materials such as vanadium oxide (VO2) as a potential ReRAM mechanism. The Mott transition, named after Nobel prize-winning physicist Sir Nevill Mott, is an insulator-metal transition that occurs at different specific temperatures for different materials. Mott insulators are thought to be non-conducting because of electron-electron interactions.


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IMEC, Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba, ReRAM, memory, semiconductor, flilament IMEC claims ReRAM filament breakthrough

Wafer fab, New York, Globalfoundries, Dresden, Germany, semiconductor, foundry Globalfoundries says New York wafer fab is ready for kit

LONDON – Globalfoundries Inc., the foundry that is majority owned by an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, has said that its newly constructed cleanroom in New York and a cleanroom extension in Dresden have both had the first chip making equipment installed.

At Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany, Globalfoundries is adding capacity to take the fab to 80,000 wafers per month and work at 45-nm and below.

Fab 8 is a new wafer fab campus under construction at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Saratoga County, New York. The company said it moved into the Admin 1 office building and broke ground on the Admin 2 building last week. With the fab now ready for equipment Globalfoundries will begin populating about 300,000 square feet of cleanroom aiming for an eventual total output of approximately 60,000 wafers per month. Fab 8 is expected to begin running wafers in 2012 with volume production in 2013 using 28-nm manufacturing processes and below.

"By completing these massive construction projects on schedule and on budget, we are continuing to deliver on our commitment to being the only truly global foundry," said Aji Manocha, Globalfoundries interim CEO.


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Wafer fab, New York, Globalfoundries, Dresden, Germany, semiconductor, foundry Globalfoundries says New York wafer fab is ready for kit

Silver pen has the write stuff for flexible electronics

Led by Jennifer Lewis, the Hans Thurnauer professor of materials science and engineering at the U. of I., and Jennifer Bernhard, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, the team published its work in the journal Advanced Materials.

"Pen-based printing allows one to construct electronic devices 'on-the-fly,' " said Lewis, the director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the U. of I. "This is an important step toward enabling desktop manufacturing (or personal fabrication) using very low cost, ubiquitous printing tools."

While it looks like a typical silver-colored rollerball pen, this pen's ink is a solution of real silver. After writing, the liquid in the ink dries to leave conductive silver pathways -- in essence, paper-mounted wires. The ink maintains its conductivity through multiple bends and folds of the paper, enabling devices with great flexibility and conformability.

Metallic inks have been used in approaches using inkjet printers to fabricate electronic devices, but the pen offers freedom and flexibility to apply ink directly to paper or other rough surfaces instantly, at low cost and without programming.

"The key advantage of the pen is that the costly printers and printheads typically required for inkjet or other printing approaches are replaced with an inexpensive, hand-held writing tool," said Lewis, who is also affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

The ability to create freestyle conductive pathways enables new possibilities in art, disposable electronics and folded three-dimensional devices. For example, the researchers used the silver pen to sketch a copy of the painting "Sae-Han-Do" by Jung Hee Kim, which portrays a house, trees and Chinese text. The ink serves as wiring for an LED mounted on the roof of the house, powered by a five-volt battery connected to the edge of the painting. The researchers also have demonstrated a flexible LED display on paper, conductive text and three-dimensional radio-frequency antennas.

Next, the researchers plan to expand the palette of inks to enable pen-on-paper writing of other electronic and ionically conductive materials.

The U.S. Department of Energy supported this work. Co-authors were graduate student Analisa Russo and postdoctoral researchers Bok Yeop Ahn, Jacob Adams and Eric Duoss.

Silver pen has the write stuff for flexible electronics

Medium voltage soft starters to have “robust growth” Electronics News

IMS Research says medium voltage soft starters will have robust growth in 2011 and beyond.

The worldwide market for medium voltage soft starters was worth an estimated US $170 million in 2010, with more than 5,000 units shipped during the year.

Sales of these products contracted significantly in 2009 as a result of the global economic downturn, and the market recovery in 2010 was very gradual.

Demand from the Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and high commodity prices, will drive the market to grow by nearly 10 percent in 2011.

According to IMS Research, if commodity prices remain at their current levels or move higher, and if growth in emerging economies does not slow significantly, the market should experience several years of healthy growth through 2015.

The Chinese market for medium voltage soft starters was the largest in the world in 2010, valued at more than US $41 million and representing nearly one quarter of the total revenues. The US market was second largest with 20 percent of the market.

IMS Research estimates that pumping applications account for 60% to 70% of the entire medium voltage soft starters market.

Industry sectors which include a significant amount of pumping operations, such as oil & natural gas, power generation and water & wastewater are the biggest vertical markets for medium voltage soft starters.
 Medium voltage soft starters to have "robust growth" Electronics News

Globalfoundries, Intermolecular, Startup, R&D Globalfoundries engages startup for R&D

SAN FRANCISCO—Globalfoundries Inc. will collaborate with startup Intermolecular Inc. on semiconductor process technology R&D under the terms of a multi-year collaborative development program and IP licensing agreement announced Tuesday (July 12).

Under the terms of the agreement, Globalfoundries will leverage Intermolecular’s high productivity combinatorial (HPC) technology to accelerate the creation of process modules that will be integrated into Globalfoundries manufacturing lines worldwide, Intermolecular (San Jose, Calif.).

The agreement marks the first publicly disclosed engagement of startup Intermolecular by a company that builds logic devices. Intermolecular has similar agreements with DRAM maker Elpida Memory Inc., as well as two undisclosed non-volatile memory companies as well as several other semiconductor and related technology firms, according to David Lazovsky, Intermolecular president and CEO.

Lazovsky noted that not only does Globalfoundries have a sizeable and distinguished R&D team of its own, but the company is also a member of IBM's Common Platform Alliance and other consortiums that share R&D. But, Lazovsky said, contracting with Intermolecular offers Globalfoundries several advantages, most notably speed of development time.

Intermolecular claims its HPC technology dramatically increases the quantity and quality of material and physical characterization, unit-process development and device integration data. The HPC approach uses advanced combinatorial processing systems that allow dozens or even hundreds of experiments to be conducted in parallel, while Informatics software and analytical methods scan results for the most promising materials and unit process candidates, according to the company.

As in other Intermolecular engagements, the startup will be compensated by Globalfoundries both with development fees and with royalties associated with any resulting technologies developed, Lazovsky. He likened the company's model to that of ARM Holdings plc on the design IP side. Lazovsky declined to disclose the specific terms of the Globalfoundries deal.

Much of the collaborative development work will be performed at Intermolecular’s HPC R&D Center in San Jose, Calif., in collaboration with Globalfoundries operations in Germany, New York, California and Singapore, Intermolecular said. Researchers and engineers from both companies will work side by side, utilizing Intermolecular’s full suite of Tempus wet-workflow development systems and Tempus AP-30 platforms, which can perform ALD, CVD and PVD deposition processes, the company said.

"This new collaboration with Intermolecular will bolster our R&D pipeline and be an important enhancement to our ability to rapidly address integration challenges and transfer IP-protected solutions into high-volume manufacturing," said Gregg Bartlett, Globalfoundries' senior vice president of technology and R&D, in a statement. Globalfoundries, Intermolecular, Startup, R&D Globalfoundries engages startup for R&D

Ultra-sensitive graphene device for spintronics

The study is published this month in the journal Nano Letters. The work has been performed by scientists from the S3 Center of Istituto Nanoscienze-Cnr, the Insitut Néel -- CNRS, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Magnetic molecules, nano-magnets only few billionth of meter small, are considered very promising for spintronics (electronics exploiting also the spin of the electron), since they can store a bit of information in a very small volume. In order to develop a new generation of magnetic memories it is crucial to be able to "read" tiny units that will soon reach the molecular size.

The new ultra-sensitive device realized enables the magnetic reading at the molecular scale. "It is the first time that such tiny objects are detected," says Andrea Candini, researcher at the Istituto Nanoscienze-Cnr, "just to make clear, the previous record of sensitivity has been beaten by a factor of 100."

To realize the device, the team deposited magnetic molecules on a sheet of graphene, the one atom-thick layer of Carbon famous for its amazing properties. Graphene works as a sort of spider's web able to chemically trap the molecules, to capture their magnetic flux and generate a corresponding electrical signal. This result is the outcome of a 3-year long research.. "Firstly, we synthesized molecules suitable to graft the graphene honeycomb lattice, then we tailored the graphene sheet realizing a device of about 10 nanometers in size; finally, we performed electrical measurements at very low temperatures, in order to limit the noise ."

According to the team of researchers, this result "shows that it is possible to use graphene coupled to magnetic molecules to store information, as.the new device works similarly to the spin valve present in a reading head of today's hard disks, but it is much smaller" says Andrea Candini, "We also foresee applications to detect bio-molecules marked with a single magnetic molecule, such as ultra-sensitive sensors to be integrated in a lab-on-a-chip. " Both of these objectives are in line with the goals of large-scale initiatives such as the Flagship Pilot Actions recently launched by the European Commission on related themes.

Ultra-sensitive graphene device for spintronics

Samsung, foundry, ARM, Cadence, Synopsys, HKMG Samsung Foundry tapes out 20-nm ARM test chip

LONDON – Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has said that is foundry chip making business has taped out an ARM processor test-chip intended for manufacture in a 20-nm process with high-K metal-gate technology.

Samsung (Seoul, Korea) worked with IP licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) and EDA companies Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Synopsys Inc. to complete the design.

At 20-nm a different approach to chip design is required compared with what has been used in the past, Samsung said. The company said its 20-nm process includes new device structures, local interconnects, and advanced routing rules. The company is switching to gate-last HKMG at 20-nm having used gate-first HKMG in its two previous HKMG generations at 32- and 28-nm.

ARM physical IP and processor IP are deployed in the test chip and Samsung said it used both the Cadence unified digital design flow and the Synopsys Galaxy design flow to implement different components and check out that both the Cadence and Synopsys design flows would work.

ARM did much of the design work which contained a Cortex M0 processor, custom memories, general purpose I/O and a number of discrete test structures. Samsung said it has a 20-nm physical design kit available for customers.


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Samsung, foundry, ARM, Cadence, Synopsys, HKMG Samsung Foundry tapes out 20-nm ARM test chip

Researchers image graphene electron clouds, revealing how folds can harm conductivity

The research, scheduled to appear June 28 in Nature Communications, was conducted by UB, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and SEMATECH, a global consortium of semiconductor manufacturers.

Graphene, the thinnest and strongest material known to man, consists of a single layer of carbon atoms linked in a honeycomb-like arrangement.

Graphene's special structure makes it incredibly conductive: Under ideal circumstances, when graphene is completely flat, electric charges speed through it without encountering many obstacles, said Sarbajit Banerjee, one of the UB researchers who led the study in Nature Communications.

But conditions are not always optimal.

The new images that Banerjee and his colleagues captured show that when graphene is folded or bent, the electron cloud lining its surface also becomes warped, making it more difficult for an electric charge to travel through.

"When graphene is flat, things just kind of coast along the cloud. They don't have to hop across anything. It's like a superhighway," said Banerjee, an assistant professor of chemistry. "But if you bend it, now there are some obstacles; imagine the difference between a freshly paved highway and one with construction work along the length forcing lane changes.

"When we imaged the electron cloud, you can imagine this big fluffy pillow, and we saw that the pillow is bent here and there," said Banerjee, whose National Science Foundation CAREER award provided the primary funding for the project.

To create the images and understand the factors perturbing the electron cloud, Banerjee and his partners employed two techniques that required use of a synchrotron: scanning transmission X-ray microscopy and near edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS), a type of absorption spectroscopy. The experiments were further supported by computer simulations performed on computing clusters at Berkeley Lab.

"Using simulations, we can better understand the measurements our colleagues made using X-rays, and better predict how subtle changes in the structure of graphene affect its electronic properties," said David Prendergast, a staff scientist in the Theory of Nanostructures Facility at the Molecular Foundry at Berkeley Lab. "We saw that regions of graphene were sloped at different angles, like looking down onto the slanted roofs of many houses packed close together."

Besides documenting how folds in graphene distort its electron cloud, the research team discovered that contaminants that cling to graphene during processing linger in valleys where the material is uneven. Such contaminants uniquely distort the electron cloud, changing the strength with which the cloud is bound to the underlying atoms.

Graphene's unusual properties have generated excitement in industries including computing, energy and defense. Scientists say that graphene's electrical conductivity matches that of copper, and that graphene's thermal conductivity is the best of any known material.

But the new, UB-led study suggests that companies hoping to incorporate graphene into products such as conductive inks, ultrafast transistors and solar panels could benefit from more basic research on the nanomaterial. Improved processes for transferring flat sheets of graphene onto commercial products could greatly increase those products' efficiency.

"A lot of people know how to grow graphene, but it's not well understood how to transfer it onto something without it folding onto itself," Banerjee said. "It's very hard to keep straight and flat, and our work is really bringing home the point of why that's so important."

"Graphene is going to be very important in electronics," said PhD candidate Brian Schultz, one of three UB graduate students who were lead authors on the Nature Communications paper. "It's going to be one of the most conductive materials ever found, and it has the capability to be used as an ultrahigh-frequency transistor or as a possible replacement for silicon chips, the backbone of current commercial electronics.

"When graphene was discovered, people were just so excited that it was such a good material that people really wanted to go with it and run as fast as possible," Schultz continued. "But what we're showing is that you really have to do some fundamental research before you understand how to process it and how to get it into electronics."

Other research partners offered the following insight into the significance of the findings:

• Dan Fischer, NIST Material Measurement Laboratory, leader, Synchrotron Methods Group: "The NEXAFS results indicating that performance-damaging contaminants cling to graphene during processing highlights the importance of chemically sensitive advanced synchrotron measurement method developments for promoting innovation and industrial competiveness in commercial applications of nanotechnology."
• Pat Lysaght, SEMATECH Front End Processes, senior member technical staff: "We place a premium on the power of collaboration, and this is a great example of the benefits associated with that philosophy. The unique expertise of each of the four collaborative entities has come together to forge a new understanding of subtle functionalization variations of surface graphene atoms. Our findings represent another important step toward potential industrial applications such as low-cost broadband radio frequency (RF) devices, and correlation of NEXAFS with Raman spectroscopy which may enhance monitoring capabilities for graphene as a replacement for large area organic LED displays."

Synchrotron imaging was conducted at the Canadian Light Source in Saskatchewan in Canada and at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS ) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York State. NEXAFS was measured at the NIST soft X-ray beamline of the NSLS.

Researchers image graphene electron clouds, revealing how folds can harm conductivity

SEMI, Fab, Tool, Forecast Consensus forecast sees 12% tool sales growth

SAN FRANCISCO—The fab tool vendor trade group SEMI Monday (July 11) released the results of its mid-year consensus forecast for the chip equipment industry, which calls for equipment sales to increase 12 percent to $44.33 billion in 2011.

Wafer processing equipment, the largest product segment by dollar value, is expected to increase 18.8 percent in 2011 to $35.1 billion, according to SEMI's consensus forecast. The forecast predicts that the market for both test and assembly equipment will contract in 2011, with semiconductor test equipment forecasted to decline by 5.5 percent to $3.92 billion and assembly and packaging forecasted to decline by 18 percent to $3.18 billion, SEMI said.

SEMI's mid-year consensus forecast is separate from the organization's world fab forecast, revised last month, which calls for spending on new and used fab equipment to reach just short of $44 billion in 2011.

According to SEMI analyst Dan Tracy, the consensus forecast updated Monday is based on input from the organization's data program participants and "can be looked at as a measure of sentiment amongst the participants." The forecast updated last month is based on analysis of company capital spending plans and a look at fab by fab spending, Tracy said. The fab by fab analysis currently projects an increase of around 27 percent in total fab equipment spending for 2011, Tracy said.

"The two forecasts are based on different methodologies and the consensus/sentiment based one tends to conservative," Tracy said via email.  
According to the consensus forecast, 2011 is expected to be the second-highest semiconductor equipment spending year on record, second only to the $48 billion spend on equipment in 2000.

In 2012, the equipment market is expected to experience a slight decrease of about 1.2 percent, with wafer processing equipment spending declining 2 percent, according to SEMI's consensus forecast. Low single-digit growth in both the test and assembly equipment markets is expected in 2012, SEMI said.


SEMI, Fab, Tool, Forecast Consensus forecast sees 12% tool sales growth

Mobile payment surge: NFC on the rise? Electronics News

JUNIPER Research says the total value of mobile transactions will reach $670b by 2015, up from $240b this year.

While the projection includes money transfers and payments for digital and physical goods, it also indicates NFC could be on the verge of a surge in popularity.

The Mobile Payment Strategies report from Juniper Research revealed that all segments will exhibit 2x to 3x growth over the next five years.

This growth will be driven by the rapid adoption of mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers as people in both developed and developing countries use their devices for everyday transactions.

Some 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months, resulting in transactions approaching $50 billion worldwide by 2014.

The top three regions for mobile payments will be Asia and China, Western Europe and North America. Together, they will represent 75% of the global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2015.

Digital goods payments will account for nearly 40% of the market in 2015.

A new Mobile Money Whitepaper and further details of the study, ‘Mobile Payment Strategies: Opportunities & Markets 2011-2015’ can be freely downloaded from www.juniperresearch.com.Mobile payment surge: NFC on the rise? Electronics News

Important step in next generation of computing: Vital insight into spintronics

Spintronics, which exploits the electron's tiny magnetic moment, or 'spin', could radically change computing due to its potential of high-speed, high-density and low-power consumption. The new research sheds light on how to make 'spin' more efficient.

For the past fifty years, progress in electronics has relied heavily on the downsizing of the transistor through the semiconductor industry in order to provide the technology for the small, powerful computers that are the basis of our modern information society. In a 1965 paper, Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore described how the number of transistors that could be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit had doubled every year between 1958 and 1965, predicting that the trend would continue for at least ten more years.

That prediction, now known as Moore's Law, effectively described a trend that has continued ever since, but the end of that trend -- the moment when transistors are as small as atoms, and cannot be shrunk any further -- is expected as early as 2015. At the moment, researchers are seeking new concepts of electronics that sustain the growth of computing power.

Spintronics research attempts to develop a spin-based electronic technology that will replace the charge-based technology of semiconductors. Scientists have already begun to develop new spin-based electronics, beginning with the discovery in 1988 of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect. The discovery of GMR effect brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk drives and was also key in the development of portable electronic devices such as the iPod.

While conventional technology relies on harnessing the charge of electrons, the field of spintronics depends instead on the manipulation of electrons' spin. One of the unique properties in spintronics is that spins can be transferred without the flow of electric charge currents. This is called "spin current" and unlike other concepts of harnessing electrons, the spin current can transfer information without generating heat in electric devices. The major remaining obstacle to a viable spin current technology is the difficulty of creating a volume of spin current large enough to support current and future electronic devices.

However, the new Cambridge researchers in close collaboration with Professor Sergej Demokritov group at the University of Muenster, Germany, have, in part, addressed this issue. In order to create enhanced spin currents, the researchers used the collective motion of spins called spin waves (the wave property of spins). By bringing spin waves into interaction, they have demonstrated a new, more efficient way of generating spin current.

Dr Hidekazu Kurebayashi, from the Microelectronics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, said: "You can find lots of different waves in nature, and one of the fascinating things is that waves often interact with each other. Likewise, there are a number of different interactions in spin waves. Our idea was to use such spin wave interactions for generating efficient spin currents."

According to their findings, one of the spin wave interactions (called three-magnon splitting) generates spin current ten times more efficiently than using pre-interacting spin-waves. Additionally, the findings link the two major research fields in spintronics, namely the spin current and the spin wave interaction.

Important step in next generation of computing: Vital insight into spintronics

Tablets, Silicon Report: Tablet silicon content to approach $14 Billion by 2015

MANHASSET, NY --  Apple’s April 2010 launch of the iPad  has had an impact on silicon providers with forecasts that silicon content for tablets will soar to nearly $14 billion by 2015.

" In 2015, tablet and e-readers silicon will account for nearly 85% of all silicon content dominating the category," according to Stephanie Ethier, Senior Analyst at market research form In-Stat.

In-Stat’s findings include the following:

•  E-reader unit shipments will reach 40 million units by 2015.
•  The processor total available market (TAM) for PMPs will reach $2.2 billion in 2011.
•  Tablet shipments will surpass 110 million units by 2013.
•  Personal navigation device (PNDs) shipments will peak in 2012, then start to decline, as a result of the proliferation of navigation capability in handsets.

The report Portable and Computing Connected Device Silicon and Non-Silicon Revenue Opportunity  provides a global view of both the silicon and non-silicon component markets for a variety of popular portable consumer electronic devices.

Tablets, Silicon Report: Tablet silicon content to approach $14 Billion by 2015

Promising fire retardant results when clay nanofiller has space

That's because the collaborators have demonstrated that the more widely and uniformly dispersed nanoscale plates of clay are in a polymer, the more fire protection the nanocomposite material provides.

Writing in the journal Polymer, the team reports that in tests of five specimens -- each with the same amount of the nanoscale filler (5 percent by weight) -- the sample with the most widely dispersed clay plates was far more resistant to igniting and burning than the specimen in which the plates mostly clustered in crowds. In fact, when the two were exposed to the same amount of heat for the same length of time, the sample with the best clay dispersion degraded far more slowly. Additionally, its reduction in mass was about a third less.

In the NIST/UMD experiments, the material of interest was a polymer -- a type of polystyrene, used in packaging, insulation, plastic cutlery and many other products -- imbued with nanometer scale plates of montmorillonite, a type of clay with a sandwich-like molecular structure. The combination can create a material with unique properties or properties superior to those achievable by each component -- clay or polymer -- on its own.

Polymer-montmorillonite nanocomposites have attracted much research and commercial interest over the last decade or so. Studies have suggested that how the clay plates disperse, stack or clump in polymers dictates the properties of the resultant material. However, the evidence -- especially when it comes to the flammability properties of the nanocomposites -- has been somewhat muddy.

Led by NIST guest researcher Takashi Kashiwagi, the NIST-UMD team subjected their clay-dispersion-varying samples to an exhaustive battery of characterization methods and flammability tests. Affording views from the nanoscopic to the microscopic, the array of measurements and flammability tests yielded a complete picture of how the nanoscale clay plates dispersed in the polymer and how the resultant material responded when exposed to an influx of heat.

The researchers found that with better dispersion, clay plates entangle more easily when exposed to heat, thereby forming a network structure that is less likely to crack and leading to fewer gaps in the material. The result, they say, is a heat shield that slows the rate of degradation and reduces flammability. The NIST team, led by Rick Davis, is now exploring other approaches to reduce flammability, including the use of advanced materials and novel coating techniques.

Promising fire retardant results when clay nanofiller has space

Cadence, Azuro, EDA, Power Cadence acquires power specialist Azuro

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Cadence Designs Systems Inc. has moved to strengthen design tools it provides to customers developing next-generation SoCs through the acquisition of power-focused Azuro Inc.

Azuro (Santa Clara, Calif.) focuses on clock concurrent optimization technology that is billed as providing SoC designers with improved power, performance and area results. It joined a Cadence-sponsored software interoperability effort based on the Common Power Format last year.

Cadence said Tuesday (July 12) that Azuro has seen rapid adoption of its optimization technology by designers implementing high-speed embedded processors and complex SoCs. Cadence considers Azuro’s EDA technology “disruptive.”

The Azuro acquisition follows a May deal in which Cadence acquired EDA vendor Altos Design Systems Inc. (Campbell, Calif.). Altos provided EDA tools needed to speed the characterization of memory, standard cell libraries and other IP.

Financial terms for both deals were not disclosed by Cadence. It did say that all “key” Azuro management and technical personnel would be retained.

It also said Azuro’s technology would be offered immediately as an upgrade to Cadence customers.Cadence, Azuro, EDA, Power Cadence acquires power specialist Azuro

Graphene: What can go wrong? New studies point to wrinkles, process contaminants

Their new paper demonstrates how both wrinkles in the graphene sheet and/or chance contaminants from processing -- possibly hiding in those folds -- disrupt and slow electron flow across the sheet. The results could be important for the design of commercial manufacturing processes that exploit the unique electrical properties of graphene. In the case of contaminant molecules at least, the paper also suggests that heating the graphene may be a simple solution.

Graphene, a nanostructured material that is essentially a one-atom thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern, is under intense study because of a combination of outstanding properties. It's extremely strong, conducts heat very well, and has high electrical conductivity while being flexible and transparent. Graphene's electrical properties, however, apparently depend a lot on flatness and purity.

Using X-rays, the UB team produced images that show the electron "cloud" lining the surface of graphene samples -- the structure responsible for the high-speed transit of electrons across the sheet -- and how wrinkles in the sheet distort the cloud and create bottlenecks. Spectrographic data showed anomalous "peaks" in some regions that also corresponded to distortions of the cloud. NIST researchers, using their dedicated materials science "beam line" at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), contributed a sensitive analysis of spectroscopic data confirming that these peaks were caused by chemical contaminants that adhered to the graphene during processing.

Significantly, the NIST synchrotron methods group was able to make detailed spectroscopic measurements of the graphene samples while heating them, and found that the mysterious peaks disappeared by the time the sample reached 150 degrees Celsius. This, according to Dan Fischer, leader of the NIST group, showed both that those particular disturbances in the electron cloud were due to contaminants, and that there is a way to get rid of them. "They're not chemical bound, they're just physically absorbed on the surface, and that's an important thing. You have a prescription for getting rid of them," Fischer said.

"When graphene was discovered, people were just so excited that it was such a good material that people really wanted to go with it and run as fast as possible," said Brian Schultz, one of three UB graduate students who were lead authors on the paper, "but what we're showing is that you really have to do some fundamental research before you understand how to process it and how to get it into electronics."

"This is the practical side of using graphene," agrees Fischer, "It has all these remarkable properties, but when you go to actually try to make something, maybe they stop working, and the question is: why and what do you do about it? These kinds of extremely sensitive, specialized techniques are part of that answer."

Graphene: What can go wrong? New studies point to wrinkles, process contaminants

Semicast, ARM, MIPS, Power, architecture, processor, embedded, home, semiconductor Semicast tips ARM to increase lead in the home

LONDON – Market research firm Semicast Research Ltd. has said that ARM increased its lead over the MIPS, Power Architecture and x86 processor architectures in digital home applications in 2010. In addition the firm said that ARM's lead is "set to increase significantly in the medium term."

Broadcom and Samsung were the two leading suppliers of embedded processors to digital home applications in 2010, with IBM, Renesas Electronics and Texas Instruments completing the top five, according to Semicast (Waterlooville, England). Collectively, the top five suppliers accounted for almost half of the market between them, according to Semicast. And four out of the five are licensees strongly committed to the ARM architecture.

Semicast did not provide any quantitative data but argued that revenues for Power Architecture in digital home will stall after short-term boost from production of next-generation games consoles.

Intel's x86 architecture has been present in the home through the ubitquity of the personal computer but barely at all in traditional consumer electronics. The emergence of tablet and netbook computers provides an opportunity for x86 in the digital home, Semicast said, but also for ARM. The x86 will also do well in digital TVs and set-top boxes, where it would be taking some slots off MIPS and some from ARM. Semicast is forecasting revenues for x86 in the digital home to pass those for Power Architecture around 2016.

"ARM's future success in the digital home is forecast across most equipment types, but one of the leading areas for growth is set to be e-book readers, media tablets and netbooks," said Colin Barnden, principal analyst at Semicast Research, in a statement.


Related links and articles:

www.semicast.net

News articles:

ARM to play in games consoles, says analyst

Researcher: ARM to increase industrial/medical sector market share to 2015

Analyst sees 'one ARM per person' per year by 2014

ARM held lead in 2008 digital home processor rankings, says analyst
Semicast, ARM, MIPS, Power, architecture, processor, embedded, home, semiconductor Semicast tips ARM to increase lead in the home

A balanced Perspective: Power costs should come down Electronics News

We found the article of Ray Keefe on the load the distribution system imposes upon us of great interest.

A very relevant point on which a lot of people appear to have given up is cleaning up the emissions, from brown coal in particular, for it can be the best coal to have.

Relating to correspondence on producing emissions free electricity at current or lower electricity prices, please see the attached "Aide Memoire" document.

Put simply, the price of electricity, as charged by NEMCO should reduce by at least $3.0 per MWh, after allowing the full costs of carbon capture, by thermoacoustic refrigeration of the greenhouse gases to liquefy all of them (CO2, NOx & SOx) and storage in the liquid state under the sub-sea silts with a pressure blanket of 3,000 metres of seawater on top of the silts.
There is no interface with the seawater, no acidification of the seawater which currently occurs with disastrous consequences for our fishery.

See the work by Harvard University, attached as “Nat. Academy CO2 storage”. Storage volume is huge, it is safe for thousands of years.

Dr. Brown wishes to ban coal, Labor is going along with this madness. The job is to clean it up for which we have the proven technology, the need is to scale it up to power station size. Such scale ups rarely fail, usual result is an improvement in efficiency as you get away from keyhole surgery.

The $100 per MWH the Greens aspire to is so renewables become a possibility. Even at $100 that is unlikely.

The two main strengths of Victoria are cheap power and cheap clean water. To lose either would be disastrous and we are doing a good job of losing both.

In our system the coal is gasified and you burn the gas, through pulse combustion, to obtain 99% heat release. Hence there is no advantage in burning natural gas for “peaking stations” as you can instantly adjust the rate of burning to power demand and inputs of solar, etc., if desired.

Our gas cost from brown coal (you get more gas with brown coal) is some 77 cents per gigajoule (GJ) versus $3.00+ per GJ from Bass Strait.

Best to keep the natural gas for domestic use.A balanced Perspective: Power costs should come down Electronics News

‘Nanocrystal doping’ results in semiconductor nanocrystals with enhanced electrical function

Semiconductor nanocrystals consist of tens to thousands of atoms and are 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. These tiny particles have uses in a host of fields, such as solid-state lighting, solar cells and bio-imaging. One of the main potential applications of these remarkable materials is in the semiconductor industry, where intensive miniaturization has been taking place for the last 50 years and is now in the nanometer range.

However, these semiconductors are poor electrical conductors, and in order to use them in electronic circuits, their conductivity must be tuned by the addition of impurities. In this process, foreign atoms, called impurities, are introduced into the semiconductor, causing an improvement in its electrical conductivity.

Today, the semiconductor industry annually spends billions of dollars in efforts to intentionally add impurities into semiconductor products, which is a major step in the manufacturing of numerous electronic products, including computer chips, light emitting diodes and solar cells.

Due to the importance of doping to the semiconductor industry, researchers worldwide have made continuing attempts at doping nanocrystals in order to achieve ever greater miniaturization and to improve production methods for electronic devices. Unfortunately, these tiny crystals are resistant to doping, as their small size causes the impurities to be expelled. An additional problem is the lack of analytical techniques available to study small amounts of dopants in nanocrystals. Due to this limitation, most of the research in this area has focused on introducing magnetic impurities, which can be analyzed more easily. However, the magnetic impurities don't really improve the conductivity of the nanocrystal.

Prof. Uri Banin and his graduate student, David Mocatta, of the Hebrew University Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, have achieved a breakthrough in their development of a straightforward, room- temperature chemical reaction to introduce impurity atoms of metals into the semiconductor nanocrystals. They saw new effects not previously reported. However, when the researchers tried to explain the results, they found that the physics of doped nanocrystals was not very well understood.

Bit by bit, in collaboration with Prof. Oded Millo of the Hebrew University and with Guy Cohen and Prof. Eran Rabani of Tel Aviv University, they built up a comprehensive picture of how the impurities affect the properties of nanocrystals. The initial difficulty in explaining this process proved to be a great opportunity, as they discovered that the impurity affects the nanocrystal in unexpected ways, resulting in new and intriguing physics.

"We had to use a combination of many techniques that when taken together make it obvious that we managed to dope the nanocrystals. It took five years but we got there in the end," said Mocatta.

This breakthrough was reported recently in the journal Science. It sets the stage for the development of many potential applications with nanocrystals, ranging from electronics to optics, from sensing to alternative energy solutions. Doped nanocrystals can be used to make new types of nanolasers, solar cells, sensors and transistors, meeting the exacting demands of the semiconductor industry.

‘Nanocrystal doping’ results in semiconductor nanocrystals with enhanced electrical function

Hong Kong, STMicroelectronics, semiconductor ST lays out strategy in HK analysts' day

At an investors' and analysts' meeting called in Hong Kong by STMicroelectronics, the company's senior executives put their best foot forward to explain their view of the market and trends of strategic importance to the company.

Using iSuppli's 2010 data, Didier Lamouche, COO, said the key applications for semiconductors include data processing, wireless and consumer in that order with the highest growth expected in wireless, automotive and industrial over 2010-2014.

Strategic trends

He outlined what ST sees are three key trends across segments, and added that the company's strategy is based on these trends, and on capturing growth in historical and new applications and markets.

Multimedia convergence, according to Lamouche, is the result of one underline trend: "Everyone wants data everywhere and in real-time. And this is driving the need for smart consumer devices."

Yet another trend that cuts across all segments is power reduction. The IT infrastructure domain is now concerned about power consumption just like portable devices have always been. "A modern data center consumes between 5MW and 20MW, which means we need one nuclear power plant for 50 data centers. The data center industry has a higher carbon footprint than the airline industry," explained Lamouche. "Moreover, mobile devices are required to push more and more data [which consumes more power].

"The third one [sensors] is changing the way all the segments of our business are interfacing with the digital IC world," added Lamouche. Francois Guibert, Executive VP & President for Greater China and South Asia, added that STMicroelectronics is the leader in MEMS for consumer electronics and mobile handsets, having generated revenue of $300 million in 2010 (from an iSuppli TAM of $1.6 billion) and shipped over 1 billion accelerometers and gyroscopes.


Figure 1: Key applications and compound annual growth rates (CAGR). Source: iSuppli; Courtesy: STMicroelectronics
Next: Next-generation televisionHong Kong, STMicroelectronics, semiconductor ST lays out strategy in HK analysts' day

Ultimate energy efficiency: Magnetic microprocessors could use million times less energy than today's silicon chips

Today's silicon-based microprocessor chips rely on electric currents, or moving electrons, that generate a lot of waste heat. But microprocessors employing nanometer-sized bar magnets -- like tiny refrigerator magnets -- for memory, logic and switching operations theoretically would require no moving electrons.

Such chips would dissipate only 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature, the minimum allowed by the second law of thermodynamics and called the Landauer limit. That's 1 million times less energy per operation than consumed by today's computers.

"Today, computers run on electricity; by moving electrons around a circuit, you can process information," said Brian Lambson, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. "A magnetic computer, on the other hand, doesn't involve any moving electrons. You store and process information using magnets, and if you make these magnets really small, you can basically pack them very close together so that they interact with one another. This is how we are able to do computations, have memory and conduct all the functions of a computer."

Lambson is working with Jeffrey Bokor, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, to develop magnetic computers.

"In principle, one could, I think, build real circuits that would operate right at the Landauer limit," said Bokor, who is a codirector of the Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S), a Science and Technology Center founded last year with a $25 million grant from the National Science Foundation. "Even if we could get within one order of magnitude, a factor of 10, of the Landauer limit, it would represent a huge reduction in energy consumption for electronics. It would be absolutely revolutionary."

One of the center's goals is to build computers that operate at the Landauer limit.

Lambson, Bokor and UC Berkeley graduate student David Carlton published a paper about their analysis online in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Fifty years ago, Rolf Landauer used newly developed information theory to calculate the minimum energy a logical operation, such as an AND or OR operation, would dissipate given the limitation imposed by the second law of thermodynamics. (In a standard logic gate with two inputs and one output, an AND operation produces an output when it has two positive inputs, while an OR operation produces an output when one or both inputs are positive.) That law states that an irreversible process -- a logical operation or the erasure of a bit of information -- dissipates energy that cannot be recovered. In other words, the entropy of any closed system cannot decrease.

In today's transistors and microprocessors, this limit is far below other energy losses that generate heat, primarily through the electrical resistance of moving electrons. However, researchers such as Bokor are trying to develop computers that don't rely on moving electrons, and thus could approach the Landauer limit. Lambson decided to theoretically and experimentally test the limiting energy efficiency of a simple magnetic logic circuit and magnetic memory.

The nanomagnets that Bokor, Lambson and his lab use to build magnetic memory and logic devices are about 100 nanometers wide and about 200 nanometers long. Because they have the same north-south polarity as a bar magnet, the up-or-down orientation of the pole can be used to represent the 0 and 1 of binary computer memory. In addition, when multiple nanomagnets are brought together, their north and south poles interact via dipole-dipole forces to exhibit transistor behavior, allowing simple logic operations.

"The magnets themselves are the built-in memory," Lambson said. "The real challenge is getting the wires and transistors working."

Lambson showed through calculations and computer simulations that a simple memory operation -- erasing a magnetic bit, an operation often called "restore to one" -- can be conducted with an energy dissipation very close, if not identical to, the Landauer limit.

He subsequently analyzed a simple magnetic logical operation. The first successful demonstration of a logical operation using magnetic nanoparticles was achieved by researchers at the University of Notre Dame in 2006. In that case, they built a three-input majority logic gate using 16 coupled nanomagnets. Lambson calculated that a computation with such a circuit would also dissipate energy at the Landauer limit.

Because the Landauer limit is proportional to temperature, circuits cooled to low temperatures would be even more efficient.

At the moment, electrical currents are used to generate a magnetic field to erase or flip the polarity of nanomagnets, which dissipates a lot of energy. Ideally, new materials will make electrical currents unnecessary, except perhaps for relaying information from one chip to another.

"Then you can start thinking about operating these circuits at the upper efficiency limits," Lambson said.

"We are working now with collaborators to figure out a way to put that energy in without using a magnetic field, which is very hard to do efficiently," Bokor said. "A multiferroic material, for example, may be able to control magnetism directly with a voltage rather than an external magnetic field."

Other obstacles remain as well. For example, as researchers push the power consumption down, devices become more susceptible to random fluctuations from thermal effects, stray electromagnetic fields and other kinds of noise.

"The magnetic technology we are working on looks very interesting for ultra low power uses," Bokor said. "We are trying to figure out how to make it more competitive in speed, performance and reliability. We need to guarantee that it gets the right answer every single time with a very, very, very high degree of reliability."

The work was supported by NSF and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Ultimate energy efficiency: Magnetic microprocessors could use million times less energy than today's silicon chips