Bank of America is the latest to challenge Square
At this point, who doesn’t want to come out with a mobile payment dongle a la Square? This year, it’s been a steady stream of companies wading in, with would-be Square killers from PayPal and VeriFone to NCR and Groupon. Now add Bank of America to the list.
Bank of America’s Mobile Pay on Demand, which becomes available Dec. 3, will offer the bank’s small and medium-sized business customers an easy way to accept credit card payments from an iPhone, iPad or Android device. Businesses can expect to pay a 2.7 percent fee on transactions, a little under Square’s flat 2.75 percent fee, said AllThingsD, which first reported on the service. Mobile Pay on Demand is designed for businesses that do a few, mostly smaller, card transactions a day.
AllThingsD said Bank of America will offer next-day access to funds, customer service by phone and the ability for retailers to be the merchant of record so their name will appear on a consumer’s credit card statements. Other features include no monthly fees, easy online sign-up and integration with existing checking accounts.
Bank of America admitted Mobile Pay on Demand is a me-too, commoditized product, but one that every bank should offer. But it highlights just how competitive it’s going to get in the mobile payment acceptance market. With hardware makers, deal providers and payment processors moving in, there’s no reason why banks wouldn’t want a part of the business, especially since they have a close relationship with many local merchants. They can just add mobile payments to their suite of services for businesses, which already includes payment terminals for larger customers.
Read More: washingtonpost.com
The gain was particularly noteworthy for Facebook because of fears that the 800 million shares — the largest in a series of lockup expirations that began after the initial public offering — would flood the market. Concern about so much surplus chasing demand kept prices down for several weeks, analysts said.
But the fears did not materialize. Facebook’s stock kept rising all day, and closed at $22.36.
“Fundamentally, people who look at the company see a lot of catalyst,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research in New York, who is bullish on the company. He added that Facebook had delivered promising third-quarter earnings last month. That was the last time Wall Street showed so much enthusiasm for the stock: shares rallied by about 19 percent the day after the earnings report.
Still, Mr. Wieser warned that a one-day gain could be offset just as quickly. “On a short-term basis, there still could be a lot of selling into the market, and demand may or may not be there,” he said.
Within an hour of the market’s close on Wednesday, one of the largest investors in Facebook, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, sold more than 4.6 million shares. Most of those, the firm said, were its shares in Instagram, which Facebook acquired this year. Andreessen retains another 3.6 million shares in Facebook.
Even at today’s rosy levels, Facebook stock is worth about 60 percent of its initial public offering price of $38 a share. Employees and early investors started selling before Wednesday, and they could sell more in the coming days.
The company’s co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has promised not to sell his shares until next year; he is the single largest shareholder. Some of his earliest backers have unloaded some of their shares, though, including Facebook’s first angel investor, Peter Thiel. So have some of Mr. Zuckerberg’s top deputies, including Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer.
Facebook entered the public market in May with an eye-popping $100 billion valuation, in what was the largest public offering from a technology company. It began plummeting soon after.
Among Wall Street’s biggest concerns has been the company’s ability to turn a profit as its users increasingly log in on their mobile phones. A majority of its more than one billion users worldwide check their Facebook pages on their phones, where the company can serve up only a limited number of advertisements.
Facebook has been trying various other measures to increase profit. This year, it introduced a way to buy gifts for friends. It is enabling application developers to advertise and pick up new customers on Facebook, and it has said that it is refining its search tools. All of these moves are potential moneymakers.
The stock slump in the last six months did not affect only retail investors. One of the principal casualties was the company’s home state of California. The state had expected to reap $1.9 billion in revenue over two years from Facebook’s public offering, but on Wednesday afternoon, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office lowered its estimate to $1.25 billion.
Some Facebook employees in California may face a higher tax bill for this year than they had expected. Voters last week passed Proposition 30, which raised the marginal tax rate for California’s wealthiest residents. For a single taxpayer with income between $500,000 and $600,000, currently taxed at 9.3 percent, the rate will rise to 10.3 percent; between $600,000 and $1 million, the rate will rise to 11.3 percent. Those who make over $1 million will pay a marginal rate of 12.3 percent.
Facebook will, in effect, offset its employees’ tax bills by withholding a portion of their shares. However, some employees may have to pay more out of pocket because the tax increase is retroactive: it applies to 2012 income. This prompted an outburst from Andrew Bosworth, director of engineering at Facebook, on his Facebook page.
“Prop 30 particularly bothers me,” he wrote on the morning after the elections. “Higher taxes are totally fair and probably called for in our bankrupt state, but retroactive taxes change the contract after the fact and feel very slimy.”
Founder of Recruiting.com and General Manager of Microsoft Bing Fund confirmed as speakers.
Scottsdale, AZ (PRWEB) October 31, 2012
On Thursday night, November 15, hundreds of techies, developers, entrepreneurs and business experts and mentors will descend on ASU SkySong for an evening of workshops, conversations with major players in the startup space, building startup infrastructure and networking. ASU Venture Catalyst is bringing Techiepalooza 2.0 (TP 2.0) to the Phoenix startup community on the heels of Techiepalooza’s (TP) successful first event. Held in June 2012, TP drew more than 500 people to the ASU SkySong facility and, with the announcement of two of TP 2.0’s main speakers, the event is on track to be even more successful this time.
Founder and CEO of Recruiting.com (formerly Jobing.com), Aaron Matos, has been announced as one of TP 2.0’s keynote speakers. Matos founded Jobing.com in 2001 and led the company through several new market start-ups and strategic acquisitions. In 2010, Matos added Recruiting.com to the organization's acquisition history from which he developed a full line of Software-as-a-Service recruitment solutions. The company name officially changed to Recruiting.com in 2012 to signify the expansion as a provider of cloud-based recruiting solutions and job board network.
Joining Matos on the TP 2.0 agenda will be Rahul Sood, General Manager of the Bing Fund, Microsoft’s new angel fund and incubator program. Sood will lead a funding panel composed of Venture Capital firms and companies that have been funded who will share their unique perspectives on each side of the funding equation. Sood is the founder of VooDooPC, the small Canadian maker of super-tricked-out gaming PCs, which he sold to Hewlett-Packard, where he stayed on at HP as CTO of global gaming. Microsoft selected Sood to be the General Manager of the Bing Fund, which plans to offer U.S.-based early-stage companies an opportunity to work at a Microsoft building in Bellevue, Wash., for at least four months. In addition to an investment, the selected start-up will get access to a lot of Microsoft technology.
Additional speakers will be announced in the coming days. Techiepalooza will also feature a number of workshops designed to give startups and techies the practical tips that they can begin to implement within their businesses immediately. Workshop topics include: mobile application development, creating a company website in Wordpress, payment solutions, SEO, 3D Printing, prototyping, and using LEAN to optimize your startup. Startups and established companies will also be showcasing their companies and employment opportunities for techies and business-minded folks.
Techiepalooza was first started as a much-needed answer to developing an integrated startup community in the Phoenix area and beyond. Connectedness has always been challenging in the Phoenix tech and entrepreneurial communities and TP 2.0 will highlight and bring together the growing community of techies and entrepreneurs in the valley. In keeping with theme of connectedness, TP 2.0 is also focused on “going local”, welcoming talent, speakers, sponsors, food trucks, microbrews, and wines from around town.
The success of the first TP event has helped to bring even more support to TP 2.0 with sponsors from all over the valley joining the event. Thanks to our sponsors and community partners-Recruiting.com, PADT, Microsoft, WePay, City of Tempe, ASU Alumni Association, SEED Spot, City of Scottsdale, Local First Arizona, the Hool Law Group, Yodel, Massage Envy, Spectrum Solutions, Popchips, WordCampPhx, LaunchSpot and Gangplank- TP 2.0 is also a completely free event.
About ASU SkySong (http://skysong.asu.edu/): ASU SkySong impacts local, state and international economies by engaging the University with businesses and governments to drive economic development and corporate engagement. ASU SkySong helps grow the economy through launching and accelerating new companies and promoting use inspired research. ASU SkySong, and the dozens of emerging innovation driven companies located there, are dedicated to positively impacting the economies of our state and the country for years to come.About ASU Venture Catalyst (http://asuventurecatalyst.org/p/):
ASU Venture Catalyst equips high potential startups for success. The Catalyst assists university students, faculty and staff, as well as local and global companies, with launching startups or accelerating existing ventures. Based at ASU SkySong, The Catalyst offers investor connections, technology road maps, go-to-market strategy consulting, mentoring opportunities, and several other programs and services, all designed to identify and develop investment-grade companies.
Read more: San Francisco Chronicle sfgate.com
3D-printer
The device, called the Solar Sinter, consists of a Fresnel lens, movable table, electrically, solar panels, batteries and power electronics. The principle of the printer is very simple: on the table, poured the sand, which is heated by focused solar beam to the sintering temperature.
At the point where melted silica sand, formed by a drop of glass - opaque, but the result is not important. In operation, the operator adds sand, and electronics automatically control the movement of the table to the layer upon layer of such droplets turned a three-dimensional object, the corresponding pattern.
The printer was tested in the Sahara: first, in Morocco, then Egypt, where solar energy is sufficient for its efficient operation. The result is shown in the video. This is not the first time Marcus Kaiser with sunlight: last year he collected a simple device for the manufacture of Solar Cutter flat objects made of plywood where the sunbeam played the role of the cutter. Working with Solar Cutter and gave him the idea of creating three-dimensional printer.
Silicon and Light
"Microchip revolution" led to a decrease in the size of chains and a huge number of transistors packed into a small volume. However, in recent years, silicon chips are faced with fundamental limitations, in particular their size close to the wavelength of light. As a result, there was talk of the imminent demise of the era of silicon electronics and the need to use alternative materials such as graphene.
However, the technology developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Utah, offers new opportunities to further reduce the silicon chips while increasing their processing power.
The new technology of silicon chips uses a combination of interference between two light sources and the photochromic material that changes color when the light beam of light. Know-how is adding a special photoresist, a polymer light-sensitive material, which is used to get a picture on the chip. Using the photoresist pattern is created for subsequent chemical etching and fabrication of complex structures for future integrated circuits.
Conventional photolithography can not produce chips with an accuracy less than the wavelength of light. The new technology allows to produce microchips with an accuracy of one-eighth of the modern. In the future, this technology can be improved to produce even more compact microchips.
The new technology of ultra-compact silicon microchips based on the widely used photolithographic processes and can be easily implemented in industrial production. Thus silicon chips for a long time did not hand over the position and will increase capacity and efficiency.
In nature there is nothing faster than light, and certainly the largest data transfer speeds can be achieved using an optical channel. But by itself does not allow the laser beam to reach such high speeds. Earlier, another group of scientists managed to reach speeds of 100 terabits, but they used a large number of laser beams, which were combined into one. "They used not one but 370 laser beams that insanely expensive. Imagine 370 lasers: they take up space and consume several kilowatts of power," - says Freud Wolfgang (Wolfgang Freude), co-author of the work under discussion.
In their work the researchers used only one laser beam with an ultrashort pulse of time. However, the laser was not in itself, but with the additional equipment that generates as output a uniform distribution of frequencies in the spectrum of the beam (this configuration is called a frequency comb, and has recently attracted much interest.) When each pulse has the same configuration, changing the time between pulses is possible to produce about 325 different colors, each of which can be used as a separate data channel. On the receiver side the data is decoding device that performs fast Fourier transform (we used optical techniques, computing power for this would not suffice) to separate data from individual channels. Thanks to the technology team managed to convey the information to professors via fiber optic cable at a distance of 50 km with a record speed of 26 terabits per second.
Wolfgang is confident that his scheme can be implemented as a chip and used for commercial development.
At this point, who doesn’t want to come out with a mobile payment dongle a la Square? This year, it’s been a steady stream of companies wading in, with would-be Square killers from PayPal and VeriFone to NCR and Groupon. Now add Bank of America to the list.
Bank of America’s Mobile Pay on Demand, which becomes available Dec. 3, will offer the bank’s small and medium-sized business customers an easy way to accept credit card payments from an iPhone, iPad or Android device. Businesses can expect to pay a 2.7 percent fee on transactions, a little under Square’s flat 2.75 percent fee, said AllThingsD, which first reported on the service. Mobile Pay on Demand is designed for businesses that do a few, mostly smaller, card transactions a day.
AllThingsD said Bank of America will offer next-day access to funds, customer service by phone and the ability for retailers to be the merchant of record so their name will appear on a consumer’s credit card statements. Other features include no monthly fees, easy online sign-up and integration with existing checking accounts.
Bank of America admitted Mobile Pay on Demand is a me-too, commoditized product, but one that every bank should offer. But it highlights just how competitive it’s going to get in the mobile payment acceptance market. With hardware makers, deal providers and payment processors moving in, there’s no reason why banks wouldn’t want a part of the business, especially since they have a close relationship with many local merchants. They can just add mobile payments to their suite of services for businesses, which already includes payment terminals for larger customers.
Read More: washingtonpost.com
Facebook Gains Even as More Shares Become Available
Even as the largest tranche of Facebook shares became eligible for sale on Wednesday, the stock rose more than 12 percent, one of the biggest single-day gains since the company’s messy public debut in May.The gain was particularly noteworthy for Facebook because of fears that the 800 million shares — the largest in a series of lockup expirations that began after the initial public offering — would flood the market. Concern about so much surplus chasing demand kept prices down for several weeks, analysts said.
But the fears did not materialize. Facebook’s stock kept rising all day, and closed at $22.36.
“Fundamentally, people who look at the company see a lot of catalyst,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research in New York, who is bullish on the company. He added that Facebook had delivered promising third-quarter earnings last month. That was the last time Wall Street showed so much enthusiasm for the stock: shares rallied by about 19 percent the day after the earnings report.
Still, Mr. Wieser warned that a one-day gain could be offset just as quickly. “On a short-term basis, there still could be a lot of selling into the market, and demand may or may not be there,” he said.
Within an hour of the market’s close on Wednesday, one of the largest investors in Facebook, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, sold more than 4.6 million shares. Most of those, the firm said, were its shares in Instagram, which Facebook acquired this year. Andreessen retains another 3.6 million shares in Facebook.
Even at today’s rosy levels, Facebook stock is worth about 60 percent of its initial public offering price of $38 a share. Employees and early investors started selling before Wednesday, and they could sell more in the coming days.
The company’s co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has promised not to sell his shares until next year; he is the single largest shareholder. Some of his earliest backers have unloaded some of their shares, though, including Facebook’s first angel investor, Peter Thiel. So have some of Mr. Zuckerberg’s top deputies, including Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer.
Facebook entered the public market in May with an eye-popping $100 billion valuation, in what was the largest public offering from a technology company. It began plummeting soon after.
Among Wall Street’s biggest concerns has been the company’s ability to turn a profit as its users increasingly log in on their mobile phones. A majority of its more than one billion users worldwide check their Facebook pages on their phones, where the company can serve up only a limited number of advertisements.
Facebook has been trying various other measures to increase profit. This year, it introduced a way to buy gifts for friends. It is enabling application developers to advertise and pick up new customers on Facebook, and it has said that it is refining its search tools. All of these moves are potential moneymakers.
The stock slump in the last six months did not affect only retail investors. One of the principal casualties was the company’s home state of California. The state had expected to reap $1.9 billion in revenue over two years from Facebook’s public offering, but on Wednesday afternoon, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office lowered its estimate to $1.25 billion.
Some Facebook employees in California may face a higher tax bill for this year than they had expected. Voters last week passed Proposition 30, which raised the marginal tax rate for California’s wealthiest residents. For a single taxpayer with income between $500,000 and $600,000, currently taxed at 9.3 percent, the rate will rise to 10.3 percent; between $600,000 and $1 million, the rate will rise to 11.3 percent. Those who make over $1 million will pay a marginal rate of 12.3 percent.
Facebook will, in effect, offset its employees’ tax bills by withholding a portion of their shares. However, some employees may have to pay more out of pocket because the tax increase is retroactive: it applies to 2012 income. This prompted an outburst from Andrew Bosworth, director of engineering at Facebook, on his Facebook page.
“Prop 30 particularly bothers me,” he wrote on the morning after the elections. “Higher taxes are totally fair and probably called for in our bankrupt state, but retroactive taxes change the contract after the fact and feel very slimy.”
Read More: nytimes.com
Startup Community to Gather at ASU's Techiepalooza 2.0
Founder of Recruiting.com and General Manager of Microsoft Bing Fund confirmed as speakers.
Scottsdale, AZ (PRWEB) October 31, 2012
On Thursday night, November 15, hundreds of techies, developers, entrepreneurs and business experts and mentors will descend on ASU SkySong for an evening of workshops, conversations with major players in the startup space, building startup infrastructure and networking. ASU Venture Catalyst is bringing Techiepalooza 2.0 (TP 2.0) to the Phoenix startup community on the heels of Techiepalooza’s (TP) successful first event. Held in June 2012, TP drew more than 500 people to the ASU SkySong facility and, with the announcement of two of TP 2.0’s main speakers, the event is on track to be even more successful this time.
Founder and CEO of Recruiting.com (formerly Jobing.com), Aaron Matos, has been announced as one of TP 2.0’s keynote speakers. Matos founded Jobing.com in 2001 and led the company through several new market start-ups and strategic acquisitions. In 2010, Matos added Recruiting.com to the organization's acquisition history from which he developed a full line of Software-as-a-Service recruitment solutions. The company name officially changed to Recruiting.com in 2012 to signify the expansion as a provider of cloud-based recruiting solutions and job board network.
Joining Matos on the TP 2.0 agenda will be Rahul Sood, General Manager of the Bing Fund, Microsoft’s new angel fund and incubator program. Sood will lead a funding panel composed of Venture Capital firms and companies that have been funded who will share their unique perspectives on each side of the funding equation. Sood is the founder of VooDooPC, the small Canadian maker of super-tricked-out gaming PCs, which he sold to Hewlett-Packard, where he stayed on at HP as CTO of global gaming. Microsoft selected Sood to be the General Manager of the Bing Fund, which plans to offer U.S.-based early-stage companies an opportunity to work at a Microsoft building in Bellevue, Wash., for at least four months. In addition to an investment, the selected start-up will get access to a lot of Microsoft technology.
Additional speakers will be announced in the coming days. Techiepalooza will also feature a number of workshops designed to give startups and techies the practical tips that they can begin to implement within their businesses immediately. Workshop topics include: mobile application development, creating a company website in Wordpress, payment solutions, SEO, 3D Printing, prototyping, and using LEAN to optimize your startup. Startups and established companies will also be showcasing their companies and employment opportunities for techies and business-minded folks.
Techiepalooza was first started as a much-needed answer to developing an integrated startup community in the Phoenix area and beyond. Connectedness has always been challenging in the Phoenix tech and entrepreneurial communities and TP 2.0 will highlight and bring together the growing community of techies and entrepreneurs in the valley. In keeping with theme of connectedness, TP 2.0 is also focused on “going local”, welcoming talent, speakers, sponsors, food trucks, microbrews, and wines from around town.
The success of the first TP event has helped to bring even more support to TP 2.0 with sponsors from all over the valley joining the event. Thanks to our sponsors and community partners-Recruiting.com, PADT, Microsoft, WePay, City of Tempe, ASU Alumni Association, SEED Spot, City of Scottsdale, Local First Arizona, the Hool Law Group, Yodel, Massage Envy, Spectrum Solutions, Popchips, WordCampPhx, LaunchSpot and Gangplank- TP 2.0 is also a completely free event.
ASU Venture Catalyst equips high potential startups for success. The Catalyst assists university students, faculty and staff, as well as local and global companies, with launching startups or accelerating existing ventures. Based at ASU SkySong, The Catalyst offers investor connections, technology road maps, go-to-market strategy consulting, mentoring opportunities, and several other programs and services, all designed to identify and develop investment-grade companies.
Read more: San Francisco Chronicle sfgate.com
Pogoplug offers unlimited cloud storage for $5 a month
In what may be an industry first, a cloud services firm is offering unlimited storage for less than $5 a month.
Cloud Engines, a San Francisco-based company, has begun offering a new plan through its Pogoplug cloud service that lets users store unlimited files, and any type, on the company's servers for $4.95 a month.
The new Pogoplug plan went live last week and lets users save files to the cloud that they can then access from any device. Cloud Engines CEO Dan Putterman said there is no limit to the devices on which you can access or save files.
Pogoplug's plan is unique in that no other service offers so much space for so little without some sort of limitation.
Other companies offer unlimited cloud storage but tend to have restrictions. Some limit the number of computers you can back up, restrict how many files you can store or ask to use the excess space on your hard drive for their network of cloud storage. Pogoplug will simply bill you once a month and let you have at it.
Putterman said the company's proprietary technology, which was developed over the last five years, and declining cost of hosted storage have made the lower price possible.
"We're passing on the economic benefits to our customers," he said.
On Mac or PC computers, users can access their files through Pogoplug's website or a client that will continuously sync up files to the cloud similar to what Dropbox does. There are also apps that can be used for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
Notable competitors offer similar-priced plans but not nearly as much storage.
Cloud company Dropbox, for example, will give you 100 gigabytes of storage for $9.99 a month or $99 a year. Box, meanwhile, will give individual users 25 GB for $9.99 a month.
Apple's iCloud offers 25 GB of total storage for $40 a year, Microsoft's SkyDrive will give you 107 GB for $50 a year, Amazon will give you 100 GB for $50 a year, and with Google Drive you can get 100 GB for $4.99 a month.
If you're thinking of getting Pogoplug and sharing the service among your family or college friends, Putterman said he has no problem with that. He said users can do that, but they probably won't want to share all their files, which may lead them to get their own account.
And for those concerned with security and reliability, Putterman points to Cloud Engines' half-decade of experience and the fact that it has offered consumers cloud storage services since 2009.
If you're interested in trying out Pogoplug but don't want to pay right away, the company offers 5 GB of storage that you can use free. Read More : latimes.com
Cloud Engines, a San Francisco-based company, has begun offering a new plan through its Pogoplug cloud service that lets users store unlimited files, and any type, on the company's servers for $4.95 a month.
The new Pogoplug plan went live last week and lets users save files to the cloud that they can then access from any device. Cloud Engines CEO Dan Putterman said there is no limit to the devices on which you can access or save files.
Pogoplug's plan is unique in that no other service offers so much space for so little without some sort of limitation.
Other companies offer unlimited cloud storage but tend to have restrictions. Some limit the number of computers you can back up, restrict how many files you can store or ask to use the excess space on your hard drive for their network of cloud storage. Pogoplug will simply bill you once a month and let you have at it.
Putterman said the company's proprietary technology, which was developed over the last five years, and declining cost of hosted storage have made the lower price possible.
"We're passing on the economic benefits to our customers," he said.
On Mac or PC computers, users can access their files through Pogoplug's website or a client that will continuously sync up files to the cloud similar to what Dropbox does. There are also apps that can be used for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
Notable competitors offer similar-priced plans but not nearly as much storage.
Cloud company Dropbox, for example, will give you 100 gigabytes of storage for $9.99 a month or $99 a year. Box, meanwhile, will give individual users 25 GB for $9.99 a month.
Apple's iCloud offers 25 GB of total storage for $40 a year, Microsoft's SkyDrive will give you 107 GB for $50 a year, Amazon will give you 100 GB for $50 a year, and with Google Drive you can get 100 GB for $4.99 a month.
If you're thinking of getting Pogoplug and sharing the service among your family or college friends, Putterman said he has no problem with that. He said users can do that, but they probably won't want to share all their files, which may lead them to get their own account.
And for those concerned with security and reliability, Putterman points to Cloud Engines' half-decade of experience and the fact that it has offered consumers cloud storage services since 2009.
3D-printer
The device, called the Solar Sinter, consists of a Fresnel lens, movable table, electrically, solar panels, batteries and power electronics. The principle of the printer is very simple: on the table, poured the sand, which is heated by focused solar beam to the sintering temperature.
At the point where melted silica sand, formed by a drop of glass - opaque, but the result is not important. In operation, the operator adds sand, and electronics automatically control the movement of the table to the layer upon layer of such droplets turned a three-dimensional object, the corresponding pattern.
The printer was tested in the Sahara: first, in Morocco, then Egypt, where solar energy is sufficient for its efficient operation. The result is shown in the video. This is not the first time Marcus Kaiser with sunlight: last year he collected a simple device for the manufacture of Solar Cutter flat objects made of plywood where the sunbeam played the role of the cutter. Working with Solar Cutter and gave him the idea of creating three-dimensional printer.
Silicon and Light
"Microchip revolution" led to a decrease in the size of chains and a huge number of transistors packed into a small volume. However, in recent years, silicon chips are faced with fundamental limitations, in particular their size close to the wavelength of light. As a result, there was talk of the imminent demise of the era of silicon electronics and the need to use alternative materials such as graphene.
However, the technology developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Utah, offers new opportunities to further reduce the silicon chips while increasing their processing power.
The new technology of silicon chips uses a combination of interference between two light sources and the photochromic material that changes color when the light beam of light. Know-how is adding a special photoresist, a polymer light-sensitive material, which is used to get a picture on the chip. Using the photoresist pattern is created for subsequent chemical etching and fabrication of complex structures for future integrated circuits.
Conventional photolithography can not produce chips with an accuracy less than the wavelength of light. The new technology allows to produce microchips with an accuracy of one-eighth of the modern. In the future, this technology can be improved to produce even more compact microchips.
The new technology of ultra-compact silicon microchips based on the widely used photolithographic processes and can be easily implemented in industrial production. Thus silicon chips for a long time did not hand over the position and will increase capacity and efficiency.
The speed of the laser
In nature there is nothing faster than light, and certainly the largest data transfer speeds can be achieved using an optical channel. But by itself does not allow the laser beam to reach such high speeds. Earlier, another group of scientists managed to reach speeds of 100 terabits, but they used a large number of laser beams, which were combined into one. "They used not one but 370 laser beams that insanely expensive. Imagine 370 lasers: they take up space and consume several kilowatts of power," - says Freud Wolfgang (Wolfgang Freude), co-author of the work under discussion.
In their work the researchers used only one laser beam with an ultrashort pulse of time. However, the laser was not in itself, but with the additional equipment that generates as output a uniform distribution of frequencies in the spectrum of the beam (this configuration is called a frequency comb, and has recently attracted much interest.) When each pulse has the same configuration, changing the time between pulses is possible to produce about 325 different colors, each of which can be used as a separate data channel. On the receiver side the data is decoding device that performs fast Fourier transform (we used optical techniques, computing power for this would not suffice) to separate data from individual channels. Thanks to the technology team managed to convey the information to professors via fiber optic cable at a distance of 50 km with a record speed of 26 terabits per second.
Wolfgang is confident that his scheme can be implemented as a chip and used for commercial development.
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