Emerging tech

An ultra-high definition image captured by the Gemini South telescope in Chile has uncovered one of the oldest star clusters in the Milky Way. The cluster, called HP 1, could give clues to how our galaxy was formed billions of years ago. “Ultra-sharp adaptive optics images from the Gemini Observatory allowed us to determine the ages of some of the oldest stars in our Galaxy,” Leandro Kerber of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Brazil, said in a statement . “HP 1 is one of the surviving members of the fundamental building blocks that assembled our Galaxy’s inner bulge.” The team used a technique called adaptive optics which removes the distortions in light caused by Earth’s atmosphere. That allows the telescope to see stars in great detail, which allows their age to be determined. The HP 1 cluster is estimated to be 12.8 billion years old. “This star cluster is like an ancient fossil buried deep in our Galaxy’s bulge, and now we’ve … [Read more...] about Chilean Telescope Uncovers One of the Oldest Star Clusters in Our Galaxy | Digital Trends

The company behind X-NAND flash memory claims to have doubled the speed of its storage for its second generation of chips, as reported by Blocks and Files (opens in new tab) , by enabling data writes in parallel. This way, X-NAND can deliver SLC levels of performance from QLC flash, which is cheaper and comes in larger capacities. Neo Semiconductor’s X-NAND architecture can be applied to all generations of flash memory and involves dividing each plane of the 3D matrix into four to 16 sub-planes, each of which can be accessed in parallel, using page buffers to optimize speed. Gen 2 X-NAND (opens in new tab) (PDF) takes this idea and compresses it down, using one plane to write to another, whereas before, it would have used three planes to write to a fourth. See our feature here for a fuller write-up of how the technology works. The simple explanation is that it speeds things up, and a Gen 2 3D X-NAND chip can be written to at 3,200 MBps instead of the 1,600 MBps of the … [Read more...] about New X-NAND Flash Tech Doubles Flash Write Speeds

Invasive cyberattacks on data centers cost billions of dollars annually, but they can be mitigated with sophisticated software and hardware-based security countermeasures. But a physical attack on machines in a data center using various fault injection methods can cause harm without breaching security. So Intel has developed its Tunable Replica Circuit (TRC) telemetry monitoring technology already supported by its 12th Generation Core Alder Lake platform to detect such attacks. "Software protections have hardened with virtualization, stack canaries, and code authentication before execution," said Daniel Nemiroff, senior principal engineer at Intel. "This has driven malicious actors to turn their attention to physically attacking computing platforms. A favorite tool of these attackers is fault injection attacks via glitching voltage, clock pins and electromagnetic radiation that cause circuit timing faults and may allow execution of malicious instructions and potential … [Read more...] about Intel’s New Tech Stops Physical Attacks

Intel seems to be bringing back something that Nvidia and AMD had long given up on: the ability, and the incentive, to use dual graphics cards in a single system. Multi-GPUs were once a big deal, but the latest generation abandoned that idea for a variety of reasons. However, Intel has allegedly confirmed that you’ll be able to use multiple Intel Arc GPUs at once. Will that help Intel capture some of Nvidia’s and AMD’s customer base? Update: Intel reached out to us with a short clarification, saying: “Intel showed a Blender Cycles rendering demo at SIGGRAPH with Intel Arc graphics. Multi-GPU rendering support for Intel Arc and Intel Arc Pro graphics cards through oneAPI is supported starting in Blender 3.3. Intel Arc graphics does not support multi-GPU for gaming.” The original article follows below. A good few years have passed since some of us were yearning for a dual-GPU setup with one of Nvidia’s latest and greatest . Stacking Titan GPUs was something many gamers … [Read more...] about Intel Arc resurrects an old AMD and Nvidia feature | Digital Trends

Australia’s newest supercomputer has crunched masses of data to create a stunning image of a supernova remnant. The supercomputer — named Setonix after Western Australia’s favorite animal, the quokka ( Setonix brachyurus ) — created the highly detailed image using data collected by ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometre Array) radio telescope, which is operated by CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), the country’s science agency. Setonix is located at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth and is a key part of the facility’s recent $70 million upgrade. The supercomputer is being installed in two stages, with the second stage expected to be up and running by the end of 2022. Dr. Pascal Elahi, Pawsey’s supercomputing applications specialist, said that processing data from ASKAP’s astronomy surveys “is a great way to stress-test the Setonix system and see what is possible.” Dr. Wasim Raja, a researcher on CSIRO’s ASKAP team, said the … [Read more...] about Supercomputer creates stunning image of supernova remnant | Digital Trends