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ANN ARBOR -- The next radically different means of information processing will be quantum computing, which researchers say will use the principles of quantum mechanics to perform complex calculations in a fraction of the time needed by the world’s fastest supercomputers. A paper published recently in Physical Review Letters (Nov. 4 issue) has proposed an experimentally realizable circuit and an efficient scheme to implement scalable quantum computing. The ability to scale up the technology from the one or two-qubit experiments that are common in the laboratory to systems involving many qubits is what will finally make it possible to actually...

Is AMD now ready to impact the enterprise space? Analysis Serious about servers By Mario Rodriques: Monday 21 October 2002, 18:37 OVER THE YEARS, much has been written and discussed about a perceived AMD weakness - stability. Many will remember Michael Dell's famous comment about the AMD environment being "too fragile". Unfortunately for AMD, even with the product recalls that plagued Intel over the years, this perception, like a ball and chain, had unjustifiably clasped itself to the chipmaker. Because stability is a prerequisite that has to be met before any major enterprise buyer would look at a company's products,...

<p>WASHINGTON  — An unusually powerful electronic attack briefly crippled nine of the 13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic this week, officials disclosed Tuesday. But most Internet users didn't notice because the attack only lasted one hour.</p> <p>The FBI and White House were investigating. One official described the attack Monday as the most sophisticated and large-scale assault against these crucial computers in the history of the Internet. The origin of the attack was not known.</p>

—Giant supercomputer to use more than 10,000 AMD Opteron processors for high-level simulations— SUNNYVALE, CA -- October 21, 2002 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the upcoming AMD Opteron™ processor based on Hammer technology is planned to power a supercomputer developed by Cray, Inc. intended for nuclear weapon engineering simulations by the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. Cray has been selected to develop the massive parallel processing supercomputer, code-named “Red Storm.” The supercomputer is expected to be at least seven times more powerful than Sandia’s current “ASCI Red” supercomputer on Sandia’s 3D, full-physics simulation codes. The...

Bend, Oregon - The U.S. Army Communications - Electronics Command (CECOM), has contracted with IdaTech to develop two, 2 kW fuel cell systems to power an array of communications and other electronic equipment on a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV - pronounced Hum-vee). One of the mobile auxiliary power units (APU) will be integrated with the HMMWV-based Command, Control & Communications On-The-Move Combat Vehicle for comprehensive field-testing. Based on a similar platform as IdaTech's 1.2 kW FCS 1200⢠fuel cell system, the 2 kW systems will provide on-board power for "silent watch" field exercises in which quiet operation is...

According to reports in Japan's Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun Ebara Corp will begin to sell mass produced Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) systems from Spring 2003. Using Nexa fuel cell stacks made by Ballard Power Systems, the units will be assembled in Ebara's Fujisawa Works. The size of the fuel cell is 73cm width, 76cm high, 36cm deep, and weighs 64kg. The system is fully portable and generates 900W electrical output. Ebara expects that it will initially appeal to companies requiring back up power sources, including railway companies and electric power companies, and aims to sell a few hundred units...

IBM today announced a new low-power, low-cost, highly integrated embedded PowerPC processor for wireless local area network (LAN) access points and other networking applications. The new chip, the PowerPC 405EP, was designed by IBM using the company's ASIC methodology to combine the PowerPC 405 processor core and other key functions into a single system-on-chip design. The chip is designed to support CPU speeds of 133, 200 and 266MHz and consumes only one Watt of power at 200MHz. In addition to wireless LAN access points, the features of the PowerPC 405EP make it ideal for other edge-of-network applications such as DSL...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. Reuters Photo The company hopes to have products available by 2005 using the advanced circuitry, perhaps even a "display card" that could store data and be carried around for use with various gadgets from games machines to mobile phones to car navigation systems. "This could be something the size of a business card, perhaps with a wireless function and touch-screen input," Mikio Katayama, head of Sharp's mobile display...

According to the Kyodo News, Toshiba has announced that it plans to market a fuel cell-powered laptop or notebook computer by 2004. This unit will have an operation time of about 10 hours, three or more times longer than conventional batteries, without charging. The company also has plans to use fuel cells as the power source in personal digital assistants (PDA).

PORTLAND, Ore., Oct 21, 2002 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- At the Energy Technology Showcase 2002, an international conference focused on major energy technology developments, Hydro Environmental Resources (HERI), Inc. (OTCBB:HYVR), a developer of hydrogen and hydrogen reactors, today announced the commercial availability of its industrial Electrical Chemical Hydrogen Fuel Reactor (ECHFR). The ECHFR is one of the first hydrogen reactors that eliminates the need for an outside energy source to produce a pure commercial-grade of hydrogen at low pressure. This proprietary process delivers a highly mobile, more cost-effective and physically safe production of hydrogen than alternative methods requiring outside energy sources...

"Don't call it antigravity research," Ron Koczor pleads. He's a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and he's talking about a project he's been working on for almost a decade. "Call it 'gravity modification.' 'Gravity anomalies.' Anything but antigravity. That's a red flag." When people find out that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has researchers working on sci-fi stuff like antigravity—or rather, "gravity modification"—the red flags do indeed start waving. Reputable scientists like Koczor earn polite disdain from colleagues (or worse, from funders of research). But truth's truth: NASA has been studying the manipulation of...

NEW YORK -- As if junk e-mail and pop-up ads weren't annoying enough on their own, now there's pop-up junk e-mail. A developer of bulk-mail software has figured out how to blast computers with pop-up spam over the Internet through a messaging function on many Windows operating systems. The function was designed for use by computer network technicians to, for instance, warn people on their systems of a planned shutdown. The pop-up messages appear on recipients' computers in separate windows, similar to pop-up ads that appear when a user goes to a Web site. But there's a difference: Anyone can...

I have been monitoring my PC system, and I have noted a pattern that might be of interest to Freepers. When ever I visit FR I generally get hit with an unauthorized Internet attack. These attacks are low-level, and it appears that someone or something is attempting to probe my PC when ever I log into FR. I strongly urge other Freepers to make sure that they have somekind of FIREWALL to protect themselves. I have noticed this before, but I haven't raised this issue, because I thought that it was just random attacks that occurred simply because I was...

Student develops Mouse Glove By Tim Richardson Posted: 10/18/2002 at 11:35 EST A 16-year-old student from Wales is looking for funding to develop a wearable mouse device. The "Mouse Glove" was developed by Tobias Patterson-Jones, who is currently studying at Coleg Powys, Brecon. The glove-like prototype fits on the hand and allows the user to control a computer in much the same way a mouse would. The invention was featured on a TV programme on The Discovery Channel after Tobias was named as one of four people chosen to pitch their ideas to a panel of experts experienced at...

AMD's Opteron could spur dual-core processor showdownBy Rick Merritt, EE TimesOct 16, 2002 (9:00 AM)URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20021016S0019SAN JOSE, Calif. — Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said its upcoming Opteron microprocessor will feature better integer performance than all other server processors, setting up a possible race with Intel Corp. to move to dual-core server processors as early as next year.AMD's 64-bit X86 processor running at 2 GHz in a 32-bit mode will hit an estimated SPECint base2000 performance rating of 1,202 and a SPECfp base2000 rating of 1,170, said Fred Weber, chief technology officer of AMD's computation products group, at the Microprocessor Forum...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- While electronic circuits and nanomachines grow ever smaller, batteries to power them remain huge by comparison, as well as short-lived. But now Cornell University researchers have built a microscopic device that could supply power for decades to remote sensors or implantable medical devices by drawing energy from a radioactive isotope. The device converts the energy stored in the radioactive material directly into motion. It could directly move the parts of a tiny machine or could generate electricity in a form more useful for many circuits than has been possible with earlier devices. This new approach creates a...

A new generation of 3-D imaging devices is on its way, capable of creating holograms that can be viewed at any angle without the use of special headgear or eyewear, Technology Review magazine reported on its website today . While the devices, being developed by the Spatial Imaging Group at the MIT Media Lab and New York University's Media Research Lab, are expected to be employed initially for scientific study, they will likely be applied to television and video games before the end of the decade, according to the developers. The NYU team is led by Ken Perlin, who won...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Using microwaves that can soften up concrete, ceramics or other materials, Israeli scientists said on Thursday they had invented a quiet, dust-free drill. The drill uses no rotating parts, but instead focuses microwaves on the area to be drilled and then punches a hole cleanly through, the researchers said. Eli Jerby and colleagues at Tel Aviv University said they had tested the drill on ceramics, concrete, basalt, glass, and silicon. "It does not require fast rotating parts, and its operation makes no dust or noise," they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

Tools Vendor Readies Passport for Linux   Server component of Microsoft's single sign-on technology may be resold apart from Windows. Matt Berger, IDG News Service Wednesday, October 16, 2002 A small software development company this week disclosed that it will soon offer prebuilt versions of Microsoft's Passport Internet-based authentication technology for the Unix and Linux operating systems.The news follows Microsoft's announcement Thursday that it will share some of the source code for its single sign-on service. The software giant said it would make available in November the code to the Passport Manager--software that links a Web site or a software...

<p>SAN JOSE, Calif.--Offering a possible peek at how Itanium processors may look in 2007, a senior Intel Corp. engineer on Tuesday unveiled the blueprint for a 1 billion-transistor processor.</p> <p>Although he discounted the idea that he was making a product announcement, Intel Fellow John Crawford nevertheless appeared to strongly suggest that his blueprint of a four-core processor would likely be developed to power future computers.</p>