Broadband in the U.S. is overpriced

Not too surprising given the near monopoly status of the industry.

From the link:

The reasons for the stagnation of U.S. broadband are multifactorial, but one of the authors, Shane Greenstein, argues that the 2003 decision allowing the broadband industry to regulate itself has caused much of the stagnation.

(For perspective, check out how much faster most of Europe and Asia is than the U.S., when it comes to broadband.)

Greenstein says that by now, broadband companies should have paid off almost all the costs associated with building out their infrastructure.

“We are approaching the end of the first buildout, so competitive pressures should have led to price drops by now, if there are any. Like many observers, I expected to see prices drop by now, and I am surprised they have not,”Greenstein told Kelogg Insight, a house organ for the university.

This means that broadband companies are now operating their broadband as almost “pure profit,” devoting only a small fraction of subscriber revenues to maintenance.

Without new entries on the market — most urban areas have at most two different broadband suppliers to choose from, the phone company and the cable company — Greenstein argues there is no incentive to lower prices.

Has Moore’s Law been defeated?

Via KurzweilAI.net — Maybe, unless quantum, optical or another basis for computing gets market-ready pronto.

Life After Moore’s Law

Forbes, Oct. 29, 2010 “We have reached the limit of what is possible with one or more traditional, serial central processing units, or CPUs,” says Bill Dally, chief scientist and senior vice president of research at NVIDIA, citing the failure of power scaling (energy consumed by each unit of computing would decrease as the number of transistors increased). “It is past time for the computing industry–and everyone who relies on it for continued improvements in productivity, economic growth and social progress–to take the leap into [energy-efficient] parallel processing.” The problem: “Converting the enormous volume of existing serial programs to run in parallel is a formidable task, and one that is made even more difficult by the scarcity of programmers trained in parallel programming.” Read Original Article>>

3D tech pushing Moore’s Law

Via Kurzweil.net — Maybe Moore’s law isn’t going to hit a wall anytime soon after all.

Going Beyond Moore’s Law by Using the Third Dimension

Physorg.com, Jan. 18, 2010 Scientists at Institute of Physics and Chemistry of Materials of Strasbourg have demonstrated a new microwire fabrication technique in which microwires self-assemble themselves in a three-dimensional template made of nematic liquid crystals. Read Original Article>>

DNA scaffolding and circuit boards

A release red hot from the inbox:

IBM Scientists Use DNA Scaffolding To Build Tiny Circuit Boards

Nanotechnology advancement could lead to smaller, faster, more energy efficient computer chips

SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Today, scientists at IBM Research (NYSE:IBM) and the California Institute of Technology announced a scientific advancement that could be a major breakthrough in enabling the semiconductor industry to pack more power and speed into tiny computer chips, while making them more energy efficient and less expensive to manufacture.

  (Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090817/NY62155-a )
  (Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090817/NY62155-b )
  (Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO )

IBM Researchers and collaborator Paul W.K. Rothemund, of the California Institute of Technology, have made an advancement in combining lithographic patterning with self assembly – a method to arrange DNA origami structures on surfaces compatible with today’s semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Today, the semiconductor industry is faced with the challenges of developing lithographic technology for feature sizes smaller than 22 nm and exploring new classes of transistors that employ carbon nanotubes or silicon nanowires. IBM’s approach of using DNA molecules as scaffolding — where millions of carbon nanotubes could be deposited and self-assembled into precise patterns by sticking to the DNA molecules – may provide a way to reach sub-22 nm lithography.

The utility of this approach lies in the fact that the positioned DNA nanostructures can serve as scaffolds, or miniature circuit boards, for the precise assembly of components – such as carbon nanotubes, nanowires and nanoparticles – at dimensions significantly smaller than possible with conventional semiconductor fabrication techniques. This opens up the possibility of creating functional devices that can be integrated into larger structures, as well as enabling studies of arrays of nanostructures with known coordinates.

“The cost involved in shrinking features to improve performance is a limiting factor in keeping pace with Moore’s Law and a concern across the semiconductor industry,” said Spike Narayan, manager, Science & Technology, IBM Research – Almaden. “The combination of this directed self-assembly with today’s fabrication technology eventually could lead to substantial savings in the most expensive and challenging part of the chip-making process.”

The techniques for preparing DNA origami, developed at Caltech, cause single DNA molecules to self assemble in solution via a reaction between a long single strand of viral DNA and a mixture of different short synthetic oligonucleotide strands. These short segments act as staples – effectively folding the viral DNA into the desired 2D shape through complementary base pair binding. The short staples can be modified to provide attachment sites for nanoscale components at resolutions (separation between sites) as small as 6 nanometers (nm). In this way, DNA nanostructures such as squares, triangles and stars can be prepared with dimensions of 100 – 150 nm on an edge and a thickness of the width of the DNA double helix.

IBM uses traditional semiconductor techniques, the same used to make the chips found in today’s computers, to etch out patterns, creating the lithographic templates for this new approach. Either electron beam or optical lithography are used to create arrays of binding sites of the proper size and shape to match those of individual origami structures. The template materials are chosen to have high selectivity so that origami binds only to the patterns of “sticky patches” and nowhere else.

The paper on this work, “Placement and orientation of DNA nanostructures on lithographically patterned surfaces,” by scientists at IBM Research and the California Institute of Technology will be published in the September issue of Nature Nanotechnology and is currently available at: http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nnano.2009.220.html.

For more information about IBM Research, please visit http://www.research.ibm.com/.

To view and download DNA scaffolding images, in high or low resolution, please go to: http://www.thenewsmarket.com/ibm.

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Source: IBM
  

Web Site:  http://www.research.ibm.com/

Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to solar

In a recent speech, former vice president Al Gore implied solar technology is growing at the same rate computer chips are shrinking — basically invoking Moore’s Law without naming the phenomena.

Now I’m all about solar innovation and improvements, but I think Gore’s a bit ahead of himself here. Not unlike a lot of the hyperbole he’s been throwing out there lately. Lots of good, solid and necessary ideas, but tossed into the mix is a pinch of BS and a dash of hucksterism. 

Just to give you an idea of my solar coverage, here’s a link to a search for [solar] on this site— not everything is solar energy, but there’s a lot there and the subject is one of the science and technology areas this blog regularly covers.

ComputerWorld has a good article on Gore’s statement and the actual relationship between Moore’s Law and solar innovation.

From the last link:

“Think about what happened in the computer revolution,” Gore said on NBC’s Meet the Press programme recenty. “We saw cost reductions for silicon computer chips of 50% for every year and a half for the last 40 years,” he said. “We’re now beginning to see the same kind of sharp cost reductions as the demand grows for solar cells — they build new, more efficient facilities to build these solar cells.”

Gore, who has formed a group, The Alliance for Climate Protection, for solar cell creation, was referring to Moore’s Law, which explains the dramatic gains in compute performance. It stems from a 1965 paper written by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, which found that the number of transistors put on a chip doubles every 18 months.

But does Moore’s Law also apply to the solar energy industry? The short answer is no. As with microprocessor technology, the price and performance of photovoltaic solar electric cell is improving. And Gore can clearly point to price drops of solar cells to make his case. But the efficiency of those solar cells — their ability to convert sunlight into electric energy — is not increasing as rapidly.

(Hat tip — KurzweilAI.net)

Billionfold increase in technical capacity according to Kurzweil

This sort of adjunct to Moore’s Law is a Ray Kurzweil specialty and a key component of the “singularity” concept. So far Ray’s predictions, if maybe a bit grandiose, have come to pass. I wouldn’t count this futurist out when contemplating the next few decades.

From KurzweilAI.net:

Making the World A Billion Times Better

Washington Post, April 13, 2008As powerful as information technologyis today, we will make another billion-fold increase in capability (for the same cost) over the next 25 years, says Ray Kurzweil. “Only technology possesses the scale to address the major challenges — such as energy and the environment, disease and poverty — confronting society. That, at least, is the major conclusion of a panel, organized by the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Engineering, on which I recently participated.”   Read Original Article>>