Assessing new varieties of maize and other crops is time-consuming and costly. Researchers must count and weigh kernels from hundreds of ears of corn to measure yield characteristics such as kernel nu...
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Perhaps surprising to many consumers, the industry that produces compute hardware (microprocessors, graphic units, etc.) is highly disconnected from the industry that produces memory storage hardware ...
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Finite element analysis (FEA) is a tool commonly used by engineers when designing parts and systems using CAD software. FEA tests the mechanical properties of computer-designed parts so that they can ...
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In the field of quantum computing, the performance of quantum bits (‘qubits’) has advanced rapidly in recent years. In contrast to classical two-state binary systems (0 or 1), each qubit can be a ...
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Lamination includes various techniques of manufacturing materials in multiple layers or ‘plies.’ Laminates are commonly used in the automotive, aerospace, medical and consumer industries. A simple...
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The development of smaller, denser transistors has revolutionized computer performance but given rise to power dissipation problems, wherein a chip or part of a chip consumes more power than can effec...
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Seismic events produce two types of seismic waves, referred to as P waves and S waves. P waves are relatively easy to detect (or “pick”) with software. S waves travel more slowly and arrive in the...
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Parallelization is one technique used to improve software performance and/or energy consumption by dividing the execution of a software program into multiple components that can run simultaneously on ...
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Autism is the fastest growing developmental disability in the United States. Currently the Center for Disease Control estimates that roughly one percent, or 1 in 88 children and 1 in 54 boys between ...
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Executing different portions of a program in parallel on different processors is known as parallelism. While this can boost how fast a program is executed, increased parallelism is not always benefici...
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Managing the power consumption of computer systems is important for reducing energy costs as well as prolonging battery life on portable devices. Power delivered to a computer normally passes through ...
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Image signal processors (ISPs) are specialized circuits in cameras that help rapidly process image data. ISPs provide white balance, geometric correction and other functions that make an image suitabl...
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Many modern computers employ multiple processor types, for example, one or more conventional CPUs operating in tandem with specialized GPUs, the latter tailored to high-speed streaming processing. T...
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3-D main memory is an emerging technology in which stacks of DRAM are situated underneath the processor. This configuration helps decrease main memory latency while allowing designers to increase main...
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Energy efficiency is important in mobile electronics such as smart phones and tablets because of their size and reliance on battery power. At the same time, these kinds of devices must perform increas...
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Processing images made up of pixel data is an important task of many modern processors, especially in portable devices like cells phones and tablets. Sophisticated image processing often requires floa...
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Modern computer processors can process data faster than the data can be exchanged with external memory. For this reason there is considerable interest in boosting the ‘bandwidth’ of the memory bus...
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Given the ever increasing amount of “big data” available, new analysis and processing tools are needed to fully leverage it. Big data is challenging to manage, requiring sophisticated mechanisms a...
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Computer programs access memory using virtual addresses, which are translated by hardware into unique physical addresses that locate the data in the cache or memory. The set of virtual addresses acces...
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High-performance computers may employ two processor systems having very different architectures, such as a CPU (computer processing unit) and a GPU (graphic processing unit). The ability of a GPU to h...
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The lignin in corn stalks makes it difficult to process for biomass and harder for animals to digest. Levels are especially high in the tough outer ‘rind’ and vascular bundles of the stem. For th...
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Most biological processes involve multiple proteins interacting with each other. While the principles governing protein-protein interactions are not fully understood, it is known that a small subset o...
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As circuit density increases, power efficiency has become a design priority for high-performance and low-power processors. Better energy efficiency means faster speeds and longer battery life. One te...
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In a multicore processor, the different cores share a common clock timing and operate at a synchronized frequency. Such processors are fast because their cores can work in parallel to execute differen...
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Some extremely complex tasks – like sorting very large databases or factoring large numbers – are challenging for classical computers. Quantum computers can solve such problems because they use qu...
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