Erosoft Technology

30/10/2025

With Chioma Akamugirl Ezenduka – I just got recognized as one of their rising fans! 🎉

04/10/2015

Light-based memory chip is the first ever to store data permanently
October 4, 2015
University of Oxford

The world's first entirely light-based memory chip
to store data permanently has been developed by
material scientists at Oxford University in
collaboration with scientists at Karlsruhe,
Munster and Exeter. The device, which makes use
of materials used in CDs and DVDs, could help
dramatically improve the speed of modern
computing.
Today's computers are held back by the relatively
slow transmission of electronic data between the
processor and the memory. 'There's no point
using faster processors if the limiting factor is
the shuttling of information to-and-from the
memory -- the so-called von-Neumann bottleneck,'
explains Professor Harish Bhaskaran, who led the
research. 'But we think using light can
significantly speed this up.'
Simply bridging the processor-memory gap with
photons isn't efficient, though, because of the
need to convert them back into electronic signals
at each end. Instead, memory and processing
capabilities would need be light-based too.
Researchers have tried to create this kind of
photonic memory before, but the results have
always been volatile, requiring power in order to
store data. For many applications -- such as
computer disk drives -- it's essential to be able to
store data indefinitely, with or without power.
Now, an international team of researchers
including researchers from Oxford University's
Department of Materials has produced the world's
first all-photonic nonvolatile memory chip. The
new device uses the phase-change material
Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) -- the same as that used in
rewritable CDs and DVDs -- to store data. This
material can be made to assume an amorphous
state, like glass, or a crystalline state, like a
metal, by using either electrical or optical pulses.
In a paper published in Nature Photonics, the
researchers describe the device they've created,
which uses a small section of GST on top of a
silicon nitride ridge, known as a waveguide, to
carry light.
The team has shown that intense pulses of light
sent through the waveguide can carefully change
the state of the GST. An intense pulse causes it
to momentarily melt and quickly cool, causing it
to assume an amorphous structure; a slightly
less-intense pulse can put it into an crystalline
state.
Later, when light with much lower intensity is
sent through the waveguide, the difference in the
state of the GST affects how much light is
transmitted. The team can measure that
difference to identify its state -- and in turn read
off the presence of information in the device as a
1 or 0. 'This is the first ever truly non-volatile
integrated optical memory device to be created,'
explains Clarendon Scholar and DPhil student
Carlos Ríos, one of the two lead authors of the
paper. 'And we've achieved it using established
materials that are known for their long-term data
retention -- GST remains in the state that it's
placed in for decades.'
By sending different wavelengths of light through
the waveguide at the same time -- a technique
referred to as wavelength multiplexing -- the team
also showed that they could use a single pulse to
write and read to the memory at the same time.
'In theory, that means we could read and write to
thousands of bits at once, providing virtually
unlimited bandwidth,' explains Professor Wolfram
Pernice of the University of Munster.
The researchers have also found that different
intensities of strong pulses can accurately and
repeatedly create different mixtures of amorphous
and crystalline structure within the GST. When
lower intensity pulses were sent through the
waveguide to read the contents of the device,
they were also able to detect the subtle
differences in transmitted light, allowing them to
reliably write and read off eight different levels of
state composition -- from entirely crystalline to
completely amorphous. This multi-state capability
could provide memory units with more than the
usual binary information of 0 and 1, allowing a
single bits of memory to store several states or
even perform calculations themselves instead of
at the processor.
'This is a completely new kind of functionality
using proven existing materials,' explains
Professor Bhaskaran. 'These optical bits can be
written with frequencies of up to one gigahertz
and could provide huge bandwidths. This is the
kind of ultra-fast data storage that modern
computing needs.'
Now, the team is working on a number of projects
that aim to make use of the new technology.
They're particularly interested in developing a new
kind of electro-optical interconnect, which will
allow the memory chips to directly interface with
other components using light, rather than
electrical signals.

26/09/2015

Virtual Reality, also known as VR, is
slowly becoming a popular topic of
discussion among those in the technology
and gaming industries. Much of this was
kick started thanks to the funding and
creation of the Facebook ’s
Oculus Rift Developer’s Kit 1 and
subsequent acquisition by Facebook.
Since then, Facebook’s Oculus and VR as
an industry have grown to include tech
and game industry companies like Nokia
, HTC ,
Samsung Electronics , Sony and Valve. At
Facebook’s Oculus Connect 2, the
company’s developer conference, the
company made a series of major
announcements that attempt to position
Facebook’s Oculus to be ready for their
Q1 2016 launch. Since Oculus was
acquired by Facebook over a year ago,
the company has struggled to meet
deadlines and has had to push the
launch of the Facebook’s Oculus Rift VR
headset into Q1 2016, where it currently
remains now. This delay came after the
company’s founder Palmer Luckey had
initially said that it would be launching
for the holiday 2015. However, since
Facebook bought Facebook’s Oculus the
company has gone on a hiring binge and
hired away people like Anna Sweet from
competitor Valve and Mary Lou Jepsen
from Google X. Facebook and Oculus still
struggle to prepare Oculus as a company
for the Rift’s consumer release which is
coming in Q1 2016.
Even with the delays and added staff
thanks to Facebook’s $2 billion
acquisition, Facebook’s Oculus still looks
like it is struggling to feel out the
market. Recently at their June E3 event,
Facebook’s Oculus announced a $10
million commitment to indie developers
to help promote third-party content. This
telegraphed to many in the industry that
Facebook’s Oculus had a serious content
problem and they didn’t know how to
solve it. Facebook’s Oculus showed to the
industry that they were worried that
they might not have that killer app to
really drive Facebook’s Oculus Rift sales
into the numbers they needed. At that
same event, Facebook’s Oculus
announced a partnership with Microsoft
to deliver VR to the Xbox one through
the PC, but it really won’t be a true VR
gaming experience, but more of a
viewing experience.
At Oculus Connect 2, Facebook’s Mark
Zuckerberg came on stage and gave a
few words about why Facebook invested
into Oculus and how the development of
media is moving towards VR and how VR
is “the next platform.” Mark Zuckerberg
also said something that I agree with,
but apparently many others are ignoring.
It is one of the biggest potential threats
to VR outside of the hardware and the
software not being up to par. That is the
overestimation of the market’s initial
growth, too many reports are putting far
too much pressure on the HMD (head
mounted display) manufacturers to
churn out unrealistic units for the sake
of meeting industry projections.
Mark Zuckerberg, the man that made the
call to invest $2 billion in VR (still the
biggest investment to date) said, “Now
this is going to grow slowly.” He then
talked about how the first smartphones
and other technologies did not ship tens
of millions of units in the first year, but
proved an idea and made it real. The fact
that Facebook’s Oculus brought Mark
Zuckerberg on stage to talk about the
importance of VR and how things will
move slowly should be an indication to
many that most projections we are
seeing are way too optimistic.
One of Oculus’ biggest problems is that
they still don’t quite have an answer to
multiple questions fundamental to their
business. One of those questions is what
kind of a company do they want to be?
Because right now, they make the
hardware, the platform and even the
content with their Oculus Story Studio.
We STILL don’t know the answer to one
of the biggest questions, what will the
Rift cost? They haven’t given exact price
of the Rift other than the fact that
Facebook’s Oculus is saying that the Rift
and a compatible gaming PC will be
$1,500.
We are finally starting to zero in on the
price with that target seeing as
Facebook’s Oculus launched their
Facebook’s Oculus Ready certification
program for system builders. They
currently only have two partners in Dell
and ASUS, which is an entirely different
point of concern about their lack of
relationships with the system builders.
They don’t have any boutique system
builders on board other than Alienware,
which is Dell’s gaming division and the
only systems Dell sells that can meet
Oculus’ recommended specs. Without
well-built stable PCs that are designed for
VR and Facebook’s Oculus Ready spec in
mind, the company could see themselves
struggling to deliver a consistent
experience across all builders.
Facebook’s Oculus stated that Oculus
Ready systems will be available for under
$1000 by the time the Facebook’s Oculus
Rift is available, which means that we
could see the Rift selling for as much as
$500. Oculus plans for a price of $300,
but that’s likely a long term price goal or
after they’ve gotten some serious unit
numbers out the door.

26/09/2015

Firefox 41 integrates WebRTC
messaging app as it fights for
relevance
Firefox Hello works, but it's hard to see it
drawing new users to Mozilla's browser.
As well as the usual array of bug fixes and
standards conformance work, Firefox 41, released
yesterday, has a new feature: integrated instant
messaging, with voice and video, called Firefox
Hello.
Hello was first included in Firefox betas in
October last year . Though integrated into the
browser, it uses the WebRTC specification for its
audio and video features. This enables Web-based
voice and video messaging between Firefox,
Chrome, and Opera. Microsoft is working on a
related spec, Object RTC, which is available in the
most recent preview of the Edge browser This
won't be directly compatible with WebRTC code,
but it opens the door to an interoperable
implementation.
In Firefox 41, a new Hello button has been added
to the toolbar, allowing conversations to be
started immediately. The system doesn't require
accounts or log-ins. Firefox users can start
conversations from the toolbar button, and
attendees in Firefox, Chrome, and Opera can join
the conversation simply by visiting its URL in the
browser.
The Hello feature was developed in conjunction
with the phone operator Telefonica. In July of this
year, Mozilla suggested that Firefox users would
start to see more features of this kind , where
development was done by third parties, including
both community efforts and corporate partners
like Telefonica. Calling the scheme "Best of the
Web," Mozilla hopes that it will attract users back
to the browser that once broke Internet Explorer's
dominance, but now is in third place behind both
Internet Explorer and Chrome.
Whether this will be effective, at least as far as
Hello is concerned, is far from clear. We gave the
feature a spin and can't deny that it all worked.
Voice and video conversations between two of us
(both using Firefox) were trivial to set up and
worked effortlessly, with decent quality. The
person creating the conversation could share their
browser tabs, or their entire desktop, with the
other people in the conversation, though this
capability didn't seem to extend to other
participants.
What's less obvious is what kind of difference
this is actually going to make to Firefox's
userbase. Plugin freedom is nice, but we can't
imagine that there's some great untapped
userbase out there that's crying out for a new
instant messaging app. As a showcase for
WebRTC, Hello is certainly easy and convenient to
use, but we suspect that virtually everyone who's
in need of an instant messaging app already has
one. In fact, we suspect that they already have
many. This makes Hello a mildly interesting
novelty, but it's Skype for the Web, which is still
in development, that's actually exciting , as it
liberates all the contacts that we already have
and puts them into a plugin-free browser
application.
But this alludes to a larger problem for Firefox:
with a declining market share, how does it stay
relevant? At its peak, about 20 percent of Web
users used Firefox; that share has now fallen
below 12 percent, with no clear signs of
stabilizing. Mozilla is working to make it a better
browser —it should soon have the same kind of
multiprocess architecture, boosting stability and
security, as found already in Internet Explorer,
Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Safari—but this is
coming at a high cost. In modernizing its
architecture, Firefox is also moving away from
the extension model that was arguably so
important in attracting people to the browser in
the first place.
Here, we're both looking at a tab that
I'm broadcasting to other conversation
participants.
The underlying work is arguably essential to give
Firefox parity with its competition, but if it
alienates a large part of the userbase by disabling
their extensions, what's the point? But equally,
that feature parity matters; it was one of the
major things that drove your author away from
Firefox and into Chrome's open arms.
Firefox rose against Internet Explorer by being the
better browser; the browser that was actively
maintained, that cared about Web standards, that
included desirable user-facing features such as
tabs and extensions. But that's no longer enough
to make it stand out; it hasn't been for years.
Internet Explorer, Edge, and Chrome are all
arguably superior from a security perspective, and
while Edge still lacks extensibility for the time
being, there's no obvious sense in which Firefox
is the better browser any more. Mozilla is also
competing against developers with bigger budgets
and many more advertising dollars. Microsoft and
Google can (and do) both advertise their browsers
far and wide and get an added bonus from being
able to make their browsers the default on two
important platforms—Android and Windows.
Mozilla simply can't match this. The organization
tried to achieve a similar position with its Firefox
OS platform, but this appears to have little
traction.
But what is Mozilla to do? The world without
Mozilla would be a worse place. The organization
was arguably fundamental in creating the
generation of browsers after Internet Explorer 6's
era of early 2000s dominance. Mozilla is
continuing to do interesting and important work in
the browser space—the development of its Rust
language and Servo rendering engine could
meaningfully advance the security state of the
art, showing that a high quality browser can be
built in a language that's largely immune to many
of the security flaws that continue to be a major
problem today . But Mozilla's ability to do this
work is contingent on being a relevant force in the
browser space.

26/09/2015

Towards becoming a better Software Engineer...

22/03/2015

Tech News @ SITRealm

"IF HE were proven to be malfunctioning, I wouldn't see how we'd have any choice but disconnection." In the film "2001", Frank Poole, an astronaut played by Gary...

15/03/2015

SITRealm Tech News

Google's hack shows a fundamental flaw in basic computer hardware that could be impossible to fully patch in existing vulnerable computers.

15/03/2015

SITRealm Tech News

Using symbol pairing, researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology have developed a search engine that makes retrieving of information based on mathematical terms practical.

15/03/2015

SITRealm Tech News

Computers that function like the human brain could soon become a reality thanks to new research using optical fibres made of speciality glass.

15/03/2015

SITRealm Tech News

How can we preserve our knowledge today for the next millennia? ETH researchers have found a way to store information in the form of DNA, preserving it for nearly an eternity.