Tag: electronics

Foxconn, Other Asian Firms Consider Mexico Factories As China Risks Grow

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Taiwan-based electronics manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron are among companies eyeing new factories in Mexico, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, as the U.S.-China trade war and coronavirus pandemic prompt firms to reexamine global supply chains. The plans could usher in billions of dollars in badly needed fresh investments over the next…

Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, Leaving Behind Toxic Trash

“Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power that will play an essential role in fighting climate change. They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste at the end of their lives — and right now, most of the world doesn’t have a plan for dealing with that,” reports Wired. (Alternate URL…

Will More Powerful Processors Super-Charge NASA’s Mars Rovers?

The Texas Advanced Computer Center talks to Masahiro (Hiro) Ono, who leads the Robotic Surface Mobility Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory which led all the Mars rover missions (also one of the researchers who developed the software that allows the current rover to operate):
The Perseverance rover, which launched this summer, computes using RAD 750s — radiation-hardened single board computers manufactured…

Controlling the electron spin: Flip it quickly but carefully

Over the past two decades, a new area at the interface of semiconductor physics, electronics and quantum mechanics has been gaining popularity among theoretical physicists and experimenters. This new field is called spintronics, and one of its main tasks is to learn how to control the spin of charge carriers in well known semiconductor structures. Many theoretical efforts are always required…

Efficient valves for electron spins

Researchers at the University of Basel in collaboration with colleagues from Pisa have developed a new concept that uses electron spin to switch an electrical current. In addition to fundamental research, such spin valves are also the key elements in spintronics—a type of electronics that exploits the spin instead of the charge of electrons. The results were published in the scientific…

Amazon and Mall Operator Look at Turning Sears, J.C. Penney Stores Into Fulfillment Centers

The largest mall owner in the U.S. has been in talks with Amazon.com, the company many retailers denounce as the mall industry’s biggest disrupter, to take over space left by ailing department stores. From a report: Simon Property Group has been exploring with Amazon the possibility of turning some of the property owner’s anchor department stores into Amazon distribution hubs, according…

Researchers Build a Low-Power Radar on a CMOS ChIp

The international R&D hub Imec has made a millimetre-wave motion detection radar integrated in a standard 28nm CMOS chip, reports Electronics Weekly, adding that it consumes just 62 mW,”making the sensor integrable into small, battery-powered devices…” The radar operates in the frequency band around 60 GHz, a license-free ISM band that can be used for new IoT applications for industrial and…

Massive 20GB Intel IP Data Breach Floods the Internet, Mentions Backdoors

FallOutBoyTonto writes: A leaker today posted on Twitter a link to a file sharing service that contains what an anonymous source claims is a portion of Intel’s crown jewels: A 20GB folder of confidential Intel intellectual property. The leaker dubbed the release the “Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release ;)” The folder has been posted by an anonymous source that claims more…

Semiconductor manufacturing techniques employed for new gamma-ray detector

NASA astrophysicists and engineers are adapting detectors used by earthbound supercolliders and creating them the same way electronics companies produce all modern consumer devices, including cell phones and laptops. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-08-semiconductor-techniques-gamma-ray-detector.html…