As IEEE Spectrum editors, we satisfaction ourselves on recognizing promising applied sciences and following them from the analysis part by way of growth and in the end deployment. In each January concern, we deal with the applied sciences that are actually poised to attain important milestones within the new 12 months.
This concern was curated by Senior Editor Samuel Ok. Moore, our in-house professional on semiconductors. So it’s no shock that he included a narrative on Intel’s plan to roll out two momentous chip applied sciences within the subsequent few months.
For “Intel Hopes to Leapfrog Its Competitors,” Moore directed our editorial intern, Gwendolyn Rak, to report on the danger the chip large is taking by introducing two applied sciences directly. We started monitoring the primary know-how, nanosheet transistors, in 2017. By the time we gave all the main points in a 2019 characteristic article, it was clear that this gadget was destined to be the successor to the FinFET. Moore first noticed the second know-how, back-side energy supply, on the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting in 2019. Less than two years later, Intel publicly dedicated to incorporating the tech in 2024.
Speaking of dedication, the U.S. army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has performed an infinite half in bankrolling a few of the basic advances that seem in these pages. Many of our readers might be accustomed to the robots that Senior Editor Evan Ackerman coated throughout DARPA’s humanoid problem virtually 10 years in the past. Those robots had been primarily analysis tasks, however as Ackerman experiences in “Year of the Humanoid,” just a few firms will begin up pilot tasks in 2024 to see if this era of humanoids is able to roll up its metaphorical sleeves and get right down to enterprise.
More just lately, totally homomorphic encryption (FHE) has burst onto the scene. Moore, who’s been protecting the Cambrian explosion in chip architectures for AI and different different computing modalities because the mid-teens, notes that, just like the robotics problem, DARPA was the preliminary driver.
“You’d expect the three companies DARPA funded to come up with a chip, though there was no guarantee they’d commercialize it,” says Moore, who wrote “Chips to Compute With Encrypted Data Are Coming.” “But what you wouldn’t expect is three more startups, independently of DARPA, to come out with their own FHE chips at the same time.”
Senior Editor Tekla S. Perry’s story about phosphorescent OLEDs, “A Behind-the-Screens Change for OLED,” is definitely a deep lower for us. One of the primary characteristic articles Moore edited at Spectrum method again in 2000 was Stephen Forrest’s article on natural electronics. His lab developed the primary phosphorescent OLED supplies, that are massively extra environment friendly than the fluorescent ones. Forrest’s analysis led to the founding of Universal Display Corp., which, after greater than 20 years, is lastly about to commercialize the final of its trio of phosphorescent colours—blue.
Then there’s our cowl story about deepfakes and their potential impression on dozens of nationwide elections later this 12 months. We’ve been monitoring the rise of deepfakes since mid-2018, once we ran a narrative about AI researchers betting on whether or not or not a deepfake video about a politician would obtain greater than 2 million views throughout the U.S. midterm elections that 12 months. As Senior Editor Eliza Strickland experiences in “This Election Year, Look for Content Credentials,” a number of firms and trade teams are working arduous to make sure that deepfakes don’t take down democracy.
Best needs for a wholesome and affluent new 12 months, and revel in this 12 months’s know-how forecast. It’s been years within the making.
This article seems within the January 2024 print concern.
This publish was corrected on 2 January. Stephen Forrest was concerned within the creation of Universal Display, however he was not a cofounder.