Future enfolds at your desktop. Computing has undergone far-reaching changes over the years. Now, what’s next in the ever-evolving field of modern computing? Let’s take a look at what’s going on in the top high-tech research labs. PCMag has taken a look at the different projects in the works at the Bell Labs, HP Labs, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, and the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and compiled a list of five ideas that would reinvent modern computing.
Home theaters are fun but the cost of having one is not that cheap. Projector parties are the next in thing. Nelson Chang and Niranjan Damera-Venkata of HP Labs are devising a technology that will totally change the meaning of a home theater. The device dubbed Pluribus will let you enrich yourself with the crisp quality image just by using a few $1,000 PC projectors and that too with-in no time. They call their project their project a “cluster computing for projectors.”
What you watch at the cinema halls is right there in your room for $12,000 only, thanks to Pluribus. How about throwing a projector party at your homes? That will be more than enough to make all your near and dear ones envy. Forget the movies, juts think how enthralling would it be for the 3D games? The simple idea behind the Pluribus is to take cheap run-of-the-mill projectors and develop a powerful projector.
Pluribus arranges the images from multiple projectors in the form of a jigsaw puzzle. What you see is - is the superior resolution, sharpness, brightness, and contrast. No worries, if one of the projectors fails due to some reason - you will still have the full image. That’s a plus point if you are throwing a party and one of the projectors breaks.
The Pluribus comprises an average PC workstation, a camera, and some nifty C coding. A 16 x 9 foot image with 4,096 x 2,304 resolution can be produced within 5 minutes and 12 projectors and a gaming computer integrating dueling graphics cards. The idea says that you can increase the number of projectors in accordance to the count of PCs.
A few days back, we saw the very gorgeous and innovative Logitech MX Air mouse. But it stands nowhere close to the Mid Air mouse, which is being in the works at the Microsoft Research. The revolutionary mouse called SOAP will let you navigate through your system with bare hand and from anywhere in the room.
Since it feels like a wet soap bar in your hand, it has been named ‘Soap.’ The accuracy of Soap can be judged by the fact that you can even play a high-speed first-person shooter with an ease. The wireless optical mouse is enclosed by a fabric hull. Patrick Baudisch cited:
Basically, it’s a mouse and a mouse pad in the same device. But instead of moving your mouse over your mouse pad, you move your mouse pad over your mouse.
The prototype device is in the working condition and is claimed by Baudisch to give PC users a whole new level of physical freedom.
Quantum computing has been always given a highly reputed position in the esoteric dome of supercomputers. It’s no more less than the Holy Grail in the world of supercomputers. We have already heard the claims from D-WAVE systems and Delft University of Technology. But, we are still far away from a full-fledged quantum computer boasting very-very high processing speeds.
But, an undergoing project at Bell Labs might make this dream come true. Steven Simon of bell labs says that they are still 10 to 20 years away from a quantum computer but they are getting closer and closer.
Well, for those who are not so familiar with quantum computing, the qubits are the unique characteristics of quantum computing that can only have the values of ‘0′ or ‘1′ or both. The only problem with the quantum systems is that they decoheres as soon as they interact with the orthodox world. They are no more capable to exist in chorus in multiple states. To overcome this very problem, Bell researchers are binding quantum systems into knots. Simon says:
If you can form the right knot, you can do the right quantum computation.
But, I don’t think we will see a full-fledged quantum computer in the very near future. It will take years for the researchers to work on the knots to come up with a true quantum machine.
Everyone familiar with PC networking knows that it’s the ‘Server‘ at the middle of the centre of all the associated things. But, Van Jacobson at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) wants to put ‘Data’ at the center of things instead of server.
Whenever you need some data from a network, you ought to have a straight connection to the data’s original starting place, the server. It’s such a waste of time to connect to server at times and if you can’t spot it, you get nothing.
The new project named Content-Centric Networking (CCN) wants the networking punditry to think of a networking system with ‘data’ at the center of the things. Under this system, you don’t need to specify that you wish to connect to the server. Instead, you simply tell the network that what data you require. The machine son the network will get your request and if they have the related info, you are in luck. Jacobson said:
You can authenticate and validate information using the information itself-independent of whom you got it from.
The idea is cool but the challenge is tough as Jacobson hopes to get the new idea down to the internet’s grass roots.
The ability to create intellectual machines has intrigued human beings since ancient times. The name, Artificial Intelligence (AI), was first used by John McCarthy who thinks of it as ‘the science and engineering of making intelligent machines’. Earlier, Jeff Hawkins, the man behind Palm Pilot and Treo, was here with his inimitable invention - software that mimics the human brain. Now, Dharmendra Modha and his team at IBM’s Almaden Research Center are looking forth to the holy grail of artificial intelligence.
Unlike the Jeff Hawkins’ mimicking software, they have plans to build a human brain in real, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. Modha said:
We’re trying to take the entire range of qualitative neuroscientific data and integrate it into a single unified computing platform. The idea is to re-create the ‘wetware’ brain using hardware and software.
The first thing to do on their list is to create a “massively parallel cortical simulator” that re-creates the brain of a mouse and is 3,500 times less complex than a human brain. Amazingly, the brain of a mouse has 16 million neurons and more than 128 billion synapses running between them. For now, they have build a prototype mouse brain that takes 6 seconds to replicate 1 second of real thinking time.
But, it won’t be an easy task for them to crate a human brain as modern neurology hasn’t explained till the date that how the brain actually works. if it meets realism, I will be damn happy to make another list of top 10 artificial technologies ready to create a real human being.
Via: PCMag
