With new chip-based software, Nortel enables a cheaper semiconductor device to perform the function of a small Internet router, supplanting costly hardware of the sort Cisco sells.
"Once you move to a semiconductor device, obviously taking advantage of Moore's Law"--that you can double the number of transistors on a chip every 18 months--"things get cheaper and they become ubiquitous, " he says.
PUFs are an innovative way of safeguarding individual chips from data theft by using the unique 'fingerprint' inherent in every semiconductor device to protect its encryption key, making it very hard to clone and thus reverse-engineer and compromise security microcontrollers.
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The heart of Nectar is a semiconductor, so the device in many ways represents a new stage in the tightening relationship of energy and IT technology.
Currently, they are building the device using a gallium-phosphide semiconductor, and while the existing rendition still requires "additional energy" outside of sheer sunlight for the process to work, they're hoping that the American Chemical Society will warm up to the idea and give 'em a helping hand.
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Perhaps more importantly, this leap would fulfill the promise made by Ion Torrent founder Jonathan Rothberg, who has promised that because his device relies on the same kind of semiconductor factories used to make Xboxes and iPods its performance will be able to improve 10-fold every six months.
Apart from the arrival of less pricey full-frame digital SLRs, the other recent development that has impressed your correspondent is the way imaging chips are migrating from CCD (charge-coupled device) technology to CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor), used widely in the computer industry.
X-ray detectors for identifying impurities in semiconductor chips (among other things) would be interested in such a device.
But the rapidly growing mobile device market has attracted the attention of a diverse set of semiconductor manufacturers, who are all vying for a greater chunk of the rapidly growing business in the coming years.
But the rapidly growing mobile device market has attracted the attention of a diverse set of semiconductor manufacturers who are all vying for a greater chunk of the high-growth, high-margin business in the coming years.
The device that Dr Kirczenow and Dr Rego had in mind is called a semiconductor heterostructure a semiconductor sandwich made of a thin layer of aluminium gallium arsenide held between two thicker layers of gallium arsenide.
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