Category Archives: STEM

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

A Quantum Computer Finds Factors

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A quantum computer, on the other hand, promises to factor a number of any size in one operation and, if one can be built, the future of the PKI looks bleak and we would have to find encryption methods that were safe against a quantum attack.

via A Quantum Computer Finds Factors.

Of course, factoring 15 isn’t something that is going to threaten the PKI and cryptography in general, but factoring  larger numbers is just a matter of increasing the number of qubits and this approach does seem to be a scalable solid state approach.

Can Android Revolutionize Spacecraft Design?

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At first glance, the idea may sound a bit silly. Why would NASA trust the operation of a satellite to a Nexus One? Surely NASA could design their own platform to power these spacecraft?

They could, but the question is, why should they? The PhoneSat program is part of the larger Small Spacecraft Technology Program, which aims to leverage the incredible advances made in consumer technology to create cheaper spacecraft. Ames engineer Chris Boshuizen explains that NASA should embrace the latest consumer technology, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel

via Can Android Revolutionize Spacecraft Design?.

OSU’s New Microbial Fuel Cell Can Generate 10-50 Times More Power From Wastewater

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A team of engineers from Oregon State University has developed a breakthrough microbial fuel cell that is capable of generating 10 to 50 times more electricity from waste than other MFCs. The team hopes that their innovation will enable waste treatment plants to not only power themselves, but also sell excess electricity back to the grid.

via OSU’s New Microbial Fuel Cell Can Generate 10-50 Times More Power From Wastewater | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building.

Mirrors Finished for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

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“Hubble is the size of a school bus,” Mountain said. “JWST is the size of a tennis court.”

JWST’s mirrors are so flat that if you stretch them all out across the United States, “the largest bump would be no bigger than two inches. That’s how smooth these mirrors are,” Mountain added.

Via Mirrors Finished for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope | Space.com.

Rootbeer GPU Compiler Lets Almost Any Java Code Run On the GPU

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Programs don’t magically become faster when they are run on GPUs. E.g. Linear Algebra algorithms work really well on CPUs, but if ported 1 to 1 ( as this would ) to a GPU their performance is just abysmal. Usually one needs to use a specially designed algorithm that can actually use the massive parallelism of a GPU and not get stuck e.g. trying to synchronize or doing other kinds of communication. GPUs really like doing the same operation on independent data, which is basically what happens when rendering an image, they are not really designed to have operations that need information of all other data, or neighbouring data in a grid…. . Just because something works on a GPU does not mean its efficient, thus the performance could be much worse using a GPU .

Also balancing CPU and GPU usage is even harder ( maybe impossible ? ) as you cannot predict what kind of System you will run your software on, thus usually these days the CPU feeds the GPU with data ( with the current Tesla cards only 1 core per GPU, this changes in the Kepler version to 32 ) and does some processing that can’t be done on the GPU, but do not share any kind of workloads.

I don’t know how the h.264 codec is structured or if it is possible to have performance gains on encoding. However I really doubt that x.264 can be just ported as they rely heavily on CPU specific features ( SSE etc ) which is quite different to the much higher level bytecode that Java would produce.

via Rootbeer GPU Compiler Lets Almost Any Java Code Run On the GPU – Slashdot.

Could an SRAM Hourglass Save RFID Chips Just in Time?

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The clock operates over spans of seconds to minutes after an RFID chip is charged up from an RFID reader or other ambient radio-wave energy. As a result, even after the radio signal is removed, the clock endows the RFID chip with the ability to know when its security keys may be in danger.

via Could an SRAM Hourglass Save RFID Chips Just in Time? – IEEE Spectrum.

Having a clock can be very useful in defending against brute-force attacks that may try to guess the chip’s passwords hundreds or thousands of times per second. A TARDIS-enabled chip—requiring no new hardware and representing fewer than 50 lines of additional code—would receive a power-up from, say, a nearby RFID reader. Instead of wiping the SRAM clean, the device would first read off the state of the SRAM, which would be partially decayed from the last time the chip was powered up. Comparing the percentage of decayed bits to a precompiled table would enable TARDIS to read off the time elapsed since the previous power-up.

NASA – Curiosity Lands on Mars

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has landed on Mars! Its descent-stage retrorockets fired, guiding it to the surface. Nylon cords lowered the rover to the ground in the “sky crane” maneuver. When the spacecraft sensed touchdown,…

via NASA – Curiosity Lands on Mars.

From: Curiosity’s Sky Crane Maneuver, Artist’s Concept

The sheer size of the Mars Science Laboratory rover (over one ton, or 900 kilograms) would preclude it from taking advantage of an airbag-assisted landing. Instead, the Mars Science Laboratory will use the sky crane touchdown system, which will be capable of delivering a much larger rover onto the surface. It will place the rover on its wheels, ready to begin its mission after thorough post-landing checkouts.

How graphics card supercomputers could help us map the universe

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Over three decades video cards have transformed computer graphics from monochrome line drawings to near photo realistic renderings.

But the processing power of the GPU is increasingly being used to tame the huge sums of data generated by modern industry and science. And now a project to build the world’s largest telescope is considering using a GPU cluster to stitch together more than an exabyte of data each day.

via How graphics card supercomputers could help us map the universe | TechRepublic.