Creative announces 100-core system-on-a-chip

Just in time for the start of CES 2012, ZiiLabs has announced its latest media-focused system-on-a-chip (SoC). This time the wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative has packed 100 cores onto the silicon, combining four Cortex-A9 units operating at 1.5GHz with 96 “StemCell” floating point units. Called the ZMS-40, it’s engineered to be used in mobile devices running the Android operating system.

The architecture of the chip is akin to AMD’s Zacate and Llano offerings, but differentiates itself in the fact that it’s geared for Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). Both chips take four logical cores and combine them with some extra muscle to help with media tasks. The ZMS-40 is programmed to use the OpenCL standard, which makes it perfect for Android devices. The problem is, Creative doesn’t have a great track record of actually getting its chips into said devices.

Last year ZiiLabs announced the ZMS-20, a chip with 48 StemCell cores with two ARM Cortex-A9s, in the exact same fashion as today’s release. Creative didn’t have a partner for the ZMS-20 either, making this two straight years of ZiiLabs announcing a chip with no apparent use. It makes us wonder what the company hopes to accomplish. Sure, the underlying tech is valid, and even needed for future speed progression, but to spend the money to engineer and develop a chip that has no apparent destination vexes the mind.

The other issue facing Creative is the fact that developers need to write their apps with the architecture of a chip in mind to fully take advantage of the power offered. Case in point being the fact that Nvidia had to launch a special application to showcase apps that have been written specifically for Tegra chips, Tegra Zone. The company has had to actively pursue larger developers to create titles that will showcase the power of the technology it has created.

With no deals (that we know of) pending for the ZMS-40, and with no apparent plans to recruit developers to write for the architecture, it looks like Creative just likes to throw money at cool-sounding chips and hope that someone notices. Perhaps, as ExtremeTech’s hardware analyst Joel Hruska suggests, Creative is simply trying to revitalize the Zen media player brand — by enticing customers with devices claiming to have “100 cores.”

Creative press release via VR-Zone

Source

Glowing bacteria biopixels: The sensor displays of the future

Genetically engineering e. coli bacteria to do cool things is the latest craze in the science world. The latest, sci-fiesque case in point: Biologists and bioengineers at UC San Diego have created a living neon sign made of e. coli bacteria that will glow based on triggered reactions, completely in unison.

Bacteria communicate by a method known as quorum sensing, which means that they actually pass molecules between them to coordinate and trigger behavior. With knowledge of how to manipulate those triggers, the bacteria can be made to react in predictable ways. In this case, some genetic engineering caused that reaction to be a fluorescent glow by adding a particular protein to the bacteria’s biological clock. That in itself is an amazing accomplishment, but quorum sensing isn’t a large or fast enough process to work quickly on millions of bacteria together, so microfluidic chips (below right) were designed to harness the localized trigger and broadcast it to the plethora of shared colonies existing on the chip.

In this fashion sensor displays can be made to glow in the presence of engineered triggers like toxic substances or disease causing organisms. Seem like science fiction? It should. Biotechnology such as living sensors are the building blocks of scientific advances in a number of fields culminating into artificial life, or at least hybrid machines with living, breathing parts. Wearable sensors or material that react to diverse stimuli are completely within reason, though the idea of wearing bacteria may sound a touch odd to most.

The colonies can also be used to monitor sustained effects, where most sensor equipment currently used is one-shot only. E. coli is easy bred in a lab and can be commercially created, so it’s a completely economically viable solution, too.

Each of the bacteria cells on the microfluidic chip is called a “biopixel,” much like the pixels on a computer or television screen. Each biopixel can be turned “on” or “off” via the triggers to create an image on the sensor, so the diverse potential of this achievement shouldn’t be understated. It’s not a stretch to imagine functional application of this technology to other sectors of science.

The future of sensing technology is going to be in living sensors that are manipulated by science to produce wanted effects. Expect to see throw-away bacteria powering displays and other equipment in the near future. We’re surrounded by (and chalk full of) bacteria every moment of our lives, it’s only fair to put some of them to work for us, right?

Read more at UC San Diego

Source