Last year, the November blog mentioned some of the challenges with Generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI).  The tools that are becoming available still need to learn from some existing material.  It was mentioned that the tools can create imaginary references or have other types of “hallucinations”.    Reference 1 quote the results from a Standford study that made mistakes 75% of the time involving legal matters.  They stated: “in a task measuring the precedential relationship between two different [court] cases, most LLMs do no better than random guessing.” T ..read more

The term meta-materials refers to materials that are created by producing material structures that do not occur in nature and also can be created with structural complexity that also would not occur in nature. Graphene has long been a material of interest. For a long time, the issue with graphene has been the ability to produce it in large areas without any defects. The work done in Reference 1 was focused on evaluating a nano electronics platform based on graphene. The interest is because the technology is compatible with conventional semiconductor manufacturing. This work was based on the re ..read more

Over the years, we have witnessed the issues or multiple peer-reviewed papers being recalled.  A recent example as reported in numerous places, Reference 1 states: “The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (SCFI), an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is seeking to retract six scientific studies and correct 31 others that were published by the institute’s top researchers, including its CEO. The researchers are accused of manipulating data images with simple methods, primarily with copy-and-paste in image editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop.” There were allegations of data manipulation in ..read more

Artificial Inelegance (AI) seems to be in the news with promises of a tremendous amount of benefits for the average person.  Specifically, “Generative AI” will be the foundation of all these benefits.   Before we start believing all the super benefits from Generative AI programs like ChatGPT, it is instrumental to understand the background behind these newer programs. In the early 1980s, personal computers started becoming a tool that was adopted by large businesses.  The development of spreadsheet programs, like SuperCalc, provided the ability to analyze large amounts of d ..read more

There is no question that we live in a digital world.  What does that mean?  Is there another world?  What is the difference?  We live in a world of computers.  Computers are based on components of electrical circuits.  The basic part of the circuit is defined by either being “on” (conducting electrical signals) or “off” (not conducting).  Each of these basic circuit parts in considered a “bit”.  So, a 32 bit controller divides the control in to 32 steps, while a 64 bit has 64 steps.  Notice, the term “steps”.  If one considers a child’s slide ..read more

As mentioned in previous blogs [Ref. 1] the power consumption to manufacture semiconductors has raised concern.  The International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS) [Ref. 2] has been evaluating that issue.  There is no short-term solution as the complexity of the circuitry continues to increase.  Changes that are being evaluated, e.g., chiplets, do not reduce the demand for semiconductor devices, but are options to produce and yield devices more efficiently. Reference 3 provides an interesting view into alternate power sources for high performance devices.  The article ..read more

Previous blogs have covered metamaterials for optics including an invisibility cloak.  Reference 1 moves into the shorter wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light.  It is interesting in that the original work waw focused on attosecond physics.  (atto is 10-18)  This field of physics is working to understand physical processes like photoelectric effect by creating short pulses of EUV.  The image area they were working on was to incorporate a single focal point of 10mm.  They were using 50nm EUV light.  The final design consisted of a 200nm film etched wi ..read more

The issue of AI has been in the headlines of major newspapers with all kinds of doom projections.  Reference 1 from earlier this year has 11 areas that should create worry.  These items include replacing humans a variety of jobs resulting in significant reductions in the work force.   The one that is appropriate in today’s concerns in the impact on the environment.  AI can provide a help in establishing low emission infrastructure and other related efforts that can be assisted by increased algorithms that provide a better understanding of the activities impacting the e ..read more

There has been a lot written about 2-D transistors and the coming applications involving the properties of the circuitry and its ability to create denser circuitry.  There are challenges as the circuit density increases.  While very small, the distance that an electrical signal needs to travel reduces the effective speed of the processor.  So, one solution is to place small pieces of memory near the processor circuitry.  It is also possible to place small amounts of specialized circuitry near other resources required by that circuitry. Let’s consider the issues as stand-alo ..read more

“AI” has become a “hot” topic in both technical publications and general newspapers.  There have been multiple stories of ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 and other Chatbots [Ref 1]. The addition of AI to search engines by Google (BARD) and Microsoft’s Bing (ChatGPT+) [Ref. 2].  Browsers, like Chrome, have been adding AI capable features [Ref. 3].  The has been news from the medical field of AI being employed by medical professionals and improving the diagnosis of patients [Ref. 4].  On the negative side, there was a publication about Chaos-GPT with very negative connotations [Ref. 5 ..read more