Sunday, May 22, 2011

Misc. May: Intel Trigate, Microscopes and GE printing

Its been such a busy May for me since it seems like the news from the micro tech world keeps coming at a faster and faster pace. There are tons of things I'd like to discuss in detail, but instead I'm just listing it here:

a) The big news this month, of course, is that Intel is building "3D" gates that have a vertical fin to allow closer packing. PCmag has a good overview of the technology and the Economist explains the corporate drama surrounding the Intel-ARM war to own the future of micro device processors and the implications of the Trigate technology in that battle. The bottom line is that Trigate will allow low power devices that will extend Moore's law further into the decade. (Not for too long: just 2 years. That gives you an idea of how tough it will be to make hardware for micro machines in the future).

b) RK sent me a link about IBM fellows and Nobel prize winners discussing their scanning tunneling microscope. Now I don't know much about quantum effects, but I always thought they were esoteric theories that were used in nuclear power plants and so on. But the STM is essentially a camera that uses quantum theory to take a picture. Its fascinating stuff, and I decided to look at the history of microscopes in wikipedia, which has a good summary. You should really spend an afternoon and learn about microscopes (as I did), but here are two interesting facts to pique your interest and get you started:

c) The BBC has a cool video about Near Field Communication technology that is converting our phones into e-wallets (not just credit cards, but ID cards and driving licenses too).

d) Here is a useful image sensor blog link by the founder of Advasense. Its a good place to go and search for topics on image sensor hardware, say back-illuminated sensors or whatever it is you are currently thinking about.

e) GE is going to be the first big manufacturing company that will produce products (ultrasound devices) by printing them. (Article from the Economist).

Saturday, May 14, 2011

New panoramic tech plus a note on 3D printing

Its amazing how web-based panoramic image browsing has become such an accepted and normal part of our life: think how accessible Google Streetview, Microsoft's Photosynth and Gigapan are. And this technology hasn't finished changing our world yet: its moving into two new territories.

The first is "indoor streetview" that Google is starting up for businesses. Thanks to RK for bringing this to my attention. Soon you'll be able to invite Google over and get a service setup so that potential customers can browse through images of your small business. Since Google Streetview pushed Google into automated cars (see this link), maybe iRobot needs to start worrying about competition from Google indoor robots? Why stop at businesses, when people already use web-cams to monitor small children from work. Looks like a possible direction for small, portable, low-power visual sensors.

The second direction that panaromic technology is moving toward is stereoscopy. You can find projects to create stereoscopic gigapans and TONS of stereo panoramas on the web. However, these don't actually "work" when you zoom in to see details. Its non-trivial to model the geometry of the scene and re-render 3D images with the right disparity as you closely look at small objects in the scene. MC pointed out that the "right" way to do this would be to capture the light-field at the viewing location. To do this, you would need to smoothly move a video camera in an arc, instead of a stereo pair of still cameras.

Side note on 3D printing: AJ has been working on 3D printer kits that can be assembled for classrooms. Related tools have inspired new kinds of art, as the Nytimes explains.

How long before we have printers that can print printers? The singularity approacheth....