Technology Review's Briefings are primers on key emerging technologies that promise to be transformational in their impact.
Microprocessors
Intel's family of Core i7 chips, which are among today's most powerful desktop processors, have as many as 774 million transistors, with channels just 100 silicon atoms across. The chips have four to six 64-bit computational cores that run at clock speeds of up to 3.3 gigahertz. In volume, one costs about $1,000; correcting for inflation, that's about what the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004, cost in 1971. Incredible advances in silicon technology over the last 40 years have made computers ubiquitous in homes and offices.
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How civilians helped win the Libyan information war.
Google's ambitious book-scanning program is foundering in the courts. Now a Harvard-led group is launching its own sweeping effort to put our literary heritage online. Will the Ivy League succeed where Silicon Valley failed?
A mathematical upgrade promises a speedier digital world.
How civilians helped win the Libyan information war.
The path computing has taken wasn't inevitable. Even today's machines rely on a seminal insight from the scientist who cracked Nazi Germany's codes.
A startup called Nicira is reinventing computer networking with an audacious goal: to make all kinds of Internet services smarter, faster, and cheaper.
Information technology is reducing the need for certain jobs faster than new ones are being created.
The path computing has taken wasn't inevitable. Even today's machines rely on a seminal insight from the scientist who cracked Nazi Germany's codes.
Local programmers and homegrown business models are helping to realize the vast promise of using phones to improve health care and save lives.
Foundation Medicine is offering a test that helps oncologists choose drugs targeted to the genetic profile of a patient's tumor cells. Has personalized cancer treatment finally arrived?
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