One of the main limitations to developing androids, is the power supply problem. The immense computing power needed, using current technology, means battery power isn't really a viable option. Humanoid robots still need power cables, or can only run for a few minutes with current battery technology. The ever-growing complexity of their circuitry and memory requirements is not at present keeping pace with the required energy efficiency needed for autonomous functioning.
The same goes for implantable circuits - they will still need, using current technologies, an external power supply. An autonomous cyborg with integrated circuitry really should not be in a position where he or she needs to plug in.
Some recent research has opened a door to a new computing paradigm - one that if successful, could cut carbon emissions, and , more to the point, make androids and cyborgs more of a possibility. At present, it is still very much on the drawing board.
Here is the article:
By combining two frontier technologies, spintronics and straintronics, a team of researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University has devised perhaps the world's most miserly integrated circuit. Their proposed design runs on so little energy that batteries are not even necessary; it could run merely by tapping the ambient energy from the environment. Rather than the traditional charge-based electronic switches that encode the basic 0s and 1s , spintronics harnesses the natural spin -- either up or down -- of electrons to store bits of data.
Spin one way and you get a 0; switch the spin the other way -- typically by applying a magnetic field or by a spin-polarized current pulse -- and you get a 1. During switching, spintronics uses considerably less energy than charge-based electronics. However, when ramped up to usable processing speeds, much of that energy savings is lost in the mechanism through which the energy from the outside world is transferred to the magnet.
The solution, as proposed in the AIP's journal Applied Physics Letters, is to use a special class of composite structure called multiferroics. These composite structures consist of a layer of piezoelectric material with intimate contact to a magnetostrictive nanomagnet (one that changes shape in response to strain). When a tiny voltage is applied across the structure, it generates strain in the piezoelectric layer, which is then transferred to the magnetostrictive layer. This strain rotates the direction of magnetism, achieving the flip. With the proper choice of materials, the energy dissipated can be as low as 0.4 attojoules, or about a billionth of a billionth of a joule. This proposed design would create an extremely low-power, yet high-density, non-volatile magnetic logic and memory system.
The same goes for implantable circuits - they will still need, using current technologies, an external power supply. An autonomous cyborg with integrated circuitry really should not be in a position where he or she needs to plug in.
Some recent research has opened a door to a new computing paradigm - one that if successful, could cut carbon emissions, and , more to the point, make androids and cyborgs more of a possibility. At present, it is still very much on the drawing board.
Here is the article:
By combining two frontier technologies, spintronics and straintronics, a team of researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University has devised perhaps the world's most miserly integrated circuit. Their proposed design runs on so little energy that batteries are not even necessary; it could run merely by tapping the ambient energy from the environment. Rather than the traditional charge-based electronic switches that encode the basic 0s and 1s , spintronics harnesses the natural spin -- either up or down -- of electrons to store bits of data.
The solution, as proposed in the AIP's journal Applied Physics Letters, is to use a special class of composite structure called multiferroics. These composite structures consist of a layer of piezoelectric material with intimate contact to a magnetostrictive nanomagnet (one that changes shape in response to strain). When a tiny voltage is applied across the structure, it generates strain in the piezoelectric layer, which is then transferred to the magnetostrictive layer. This strain rotates the direction of magnetism, achieving the flip. With the proper choice of materials, the energy dissipated can be as low as 0.4 attojoules, or about a billionth of a billionth of a joule. This proposed design would create an extremely low-power, yet high-density, non-volatile magnetic logic and memory system.
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