💡 World’s 1st photonic chip, Nvidia supercomputer, Semiconductor ‘gold’ene

Researchers have developed the world’s first universal, programmable, and multifunctional photonic chip. A photonic chip is similar to a silicon-based chip, but it processes information using photons or light instead of electrons.

The invention is expected to be a revolutionary step for telecommunications, data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. For the details on how the photonic chip works, have a quick look at today’s Must-Read.

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MUST READ

💡 Big breakthrough: World’s 1st programmable photonic chip developed

In electronic chips, the flow of electrons through components like resistors, capacitors, and transistors generates heat. For AI applications and data centers on a large scale, this heat production increases significantly. More power is needed for cooling systems, resulting in a highly inefficient setup.

To facilitate the shift in processing information, a photonic chip uses optical components such as waveguides, lasers, and polarizers instead of electronic ones such as resistors or transistors to process information.

Now, researchers claim they have built a revolutionary chip that allows on-demand programming and interconnects the wireless and photonic segments seamlessly. The approach removes bottlenecks that can thus be generated and improves the capacity and bandwidth of the chip.

🖥️ Los Alamos fires up 10 exaFLOPS AI supercomputer, Venado, powered by Nvidia

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has announced that its much-anticipated Venado AI-enabled supercomputer is now up and running. Named after Venado Peak (a mountain near Taos), this supercomputer will help accelerate various research topics for LANL.

First announced in 2022, Venado incorporates NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips. These chips are a powerful combination of an Arm-based NVIDIA central processing unit and an NVIDIA Hopper architecture-based graphics processing unit. 

They are designed to meet the needs of high-performance computing and giant-scale AI applications. Venado is also set to advance national security.

🧪 Semiconductor ‘gold’ene: Single-atom-thick sheets created, in a first

For the first time, scientists have successfully fabricated gold sheets that measure only one atom in thickness. Named ‘goldene’, it has given gold new qualities that make it appropriate for various applications.

According to researchers from Linköping University (LiU) in Sweden, goldene can be used to create hydrogen and value-added compounds and also for carbon dioxide conversion. The researchers achieved success by employing a century-old technique by Japanese blacksmiths.

In its conventional form, gold typically manifests as a metal. However, when reduced to a single-atom-layer thickness, it undergoes a transformation, exhibiting semiconductor properties instead.

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