lundi 13 février 2012

IBM spins ultrasharp nanomanufacturing tool 100,000X smaller than a pencil tip

The new IBM tip offers lower wear rate than conventional silicon tips and is 100X stronger company claims 

 

IBM spins ultrasharp nanomanufacturing tool 100,000X smaller than a pencil tip

The new IBM tip offers lower wear rate than conventional silicon tips and is 100X stronger company claims


ibmIBM says it has developed a silicon carbide tip for nanomanufacturing applications that it claims is a thousand times more wear-resistant than current tool bits and 100,000 times smaller than a pencil tip.
IBM scientists say the the new tip can be used to fabricate all manner of bio sensors, for example for managing glucose levels in diabetic patients or monitoring pollution levels in water.
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Developed by IBM Research- Zurich, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin-Madison the nano-sized tip wears away at the rate of less than one atom per millimeter of sliding on a substrate of silicon dioxide.  That fact is important IBM says because silicon-used in almost all integrated circuit devices-oxidizes in the atmosphere, forming a thin layer oxide.  Poor wear performance of the tip materials used so far, especially when slid against silicon oxide, have previously limited their usefulness for experimental applications, IBM said.
The new tip offers a much lower wear rate of conventional silicon tips and its hardness is 100 times greater than that of the previously state-of-the-art silicon oxide-doped diamond-like carbon tips developed by the same team last year, IBM stated.
"Compared to our previous work in silicon, the new carbide tip can slide on a silicon dioxide surface about 10,000 times farther before the same wear volume is reached and 300 times farther than our previous diamond-like carbon tip.  This is a significant achievement that will make nanomanufacturing both practical and affordable," said Prof. Robert Carpick of the University of Pennsylvania in a statement.
To create the new tip, the scientists said they developed a process whereby the surfaces of nanoscale silicon tips are exposed to carbon ions and then hardened so that a strong silicon carbide layer is formed, but the nanoscale sharpness of the original silicon tip is maintained. Although silicon carbide has long been known as an ideal candidate material for such tips, the unique carbon implantation and galvanizing process made it possible to harden the surface while maintaining the original shape and ensuring strong adhesion between the hardened surface of the tip and the underlying material-similar to how steel is tempered to make it harder.

By Layer 8 on Thu, 02/09/12 - 2:51pm. 

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/ibm-spins-ultrasharp-nanomanufacturing-tool-100000x-smaller-pencil-tip






IBM's Watson is changing careers

The Jeopardy-playing supercomputer is interesting in doing more than sparring with Alex Trebek. So it's going into business.

FORTUNE -- Beating lowly humans on Jeopardy was just the beginning. IBM's famed Watson supercomputer will soon be available as a commercialized analytics tool for data-heavy industries like healthcare, telecom and financial services.
ibm_watson_jeopardyIt's been one year since Watson followed in the footsteps of its chess-playing predecessor Deep Blue and proved -- just in case anyone had a doubt -- that machines are smarter than people. Now, Watson's first pilot customer, Indianapolis-based insurance company WellPoint (WLP), is getting ready to take the massive analytics engine for a test drive. More beta customers (spanning both healthcare and financial services) will follow in the next few months, according to IBM's (IBM) general manager of Watson Solutions, Manoj Saxena.
MORE: Buffett goes big in Big Blue
Watson was the result of IBM's years-long quest to build a natural language processing machine that could answer questions with speed and accuracy. The computing cluster, comprised of 90 servers, made its debut on Jeopardy last year. But it wasn't just a game show gimmick. IBM plans to sell Watson as a cloud-based service companies can tap to find answers in disparate data sets. For example, a financial services firm could use it to sift through news reports and market research to find likely acquisition targets. Or a healthcare company could utilize Watson to process medical articles, prior cases and even a patient's own medical history and identify the most likely diagnosis and best course of treatment.
Of course, data analytics is nothing new. But the terabytes upon terabytes of unstructured data in the world (including Tweets, Facebook updates and Amazon (AMZN) reviews) is unprecedented. According to IBM's Saxena, 90% of the world's information was generated in the last two years. Producing data is much easier than making sense of it. That's where Watson and other next-generation analytics tools come in. The supercomputer can process 200 million web pages in three seconds. What's more, it can understand human language. Think of it as the iPhone's Siri, Apple's (AAPL) intelligent personal assistant, on intergalactic steroids. In fact, Saxena says users will someday be able to access Watson from their smartphone or tablet. He also plans to "teach" Watson different languages, including Japanese and French, so it could work for customers abroad.
MORE: IBM's new chief: "Don't accept inevitable"
But while Watson has game-changing potential as an enterprise product, most companies are just starting to deploy so-called "big data" projects, and aren't ready for a heavy-duty analytics engine like Watson. To that end, IBM is rolling out "Ready for Watson," a program to get companies set up with basic analytics applications.
Analytics is a big part of IBM's long-term strategy. Over the past five years, the company has invested $14 billion in analytics-related acquisitions, including SPSS, Cognos and Netezza. By 2015, IBM expects it will rake in $16 billion from the analytics products it sells, including Watson. In the meantime, IBM competitors like Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP) aren't sitting still and have made their own large-scale acquisitions in this space. And while they may not have a supercomputer of Watson's fame, it's way too early to call it a game.

  February 3, 2012: 11:56 AM ET
 http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/03/ibms-watson-is-changing-careers/