Quantum computing utilizes quantum-mechanical phenomena, including superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. According to Wikipedia, quantum computers differ from traditional binary digital electronic systems based on transistors. To be sure, digital computing encodes data into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one or two definite states: 0 or 1. In contrast, quantum computation exploits quantum bits, which can be in superpositions of states.
Intel says DDR4 is ramping quickly
Last week at IDF 2016, Intel executive Geof Findley presented a comprehensive overview of the memory industry ecosystem. According to Findley, DDR4 is ramping quickly and should hit 31% of shipments during the second quarter of 2016.
With volume shipments kicking off in 2014, almost all servers are now shipping with DDR4, while most PCs will ship with DDR4 by the end of 2016. In addition, says Findley, DDR4 volume and a price crossover should occur in the first half of 2016, with the upcoming 8GB transition tied to DDR4 adoption.
Building a seismic supercomputer in the shadow of Dennard Scaling
Bert Beals of Cray Inc. recently told the Digital Energy Journal that the industry can no longer simply build an efficient supercomputer for seismic processing by simply adding more processors.
Indeed, because Dennard Scaling no longer applies, advanced microprocessors now require more power and additional cooling for heat dissipation. Moreover, even though engineers might fit more transistors on a microchip, clock rates are not expected to increase significantly and transistors may have to remain dark in order to deal with thermal limitations.
Are today’s avionics systems more vulnerable to cyberattacks and to side channel attacks?
Cybersecurity and aviation experts believe a growing number of commercial aircraft could be vulnerable to on board computers being hacked or taken over remotely by passengers with malicious intent.
Safecracking goes high-tech with side-channel attacks
During the early days of safecracking, rudimentary rotary locks were compromised by feel or sound to determine the correct combination. Following in this tradition, a security researcher known as Plore recently demonstrated how side-channel attacks can be exploited to unlock “high security” electronic safes without leaving any evidence of unauthorized access.
Smart Data Acceleration with FPGAs and DRAM
The proliferation of connected devices has significantly increased the amount of data being captured, moved and analyzed. This trend is expected to continue well into the foreseeable future as the rapidly burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) ramps up. Perhaps not surprisingly, the exponential increase in data has created a number of new bottlenecks in data centers, prompting the industry to examine fresh approaches to system architecture.
