ALL ABOARD THE THE LAST A FORGOTTEN MICROGRIDS HYDROGEN TRAIN TRANSISTOR? REVOLUTION GO MOBILE Fuel cells go the Nanosheet devices and Why switching power A new and cleaner extra mile the end of Moore’s Law supplies triumphed way to power a ferry P. 06 P. 30 P. 36 P. 42

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30 THE LAST 36 THE QUIET 42 HAPPINESS IS 06 NEWS SILICON REMAKING OF A HYBRID-ELECTRIC 14 RESOURCES TRANSFORMER TRANSISTOR COMPUTER POWER FERRY 04 OPINION The next step in SUPPLIES The retrofitted 52 PAST FORWARD A startup founded by ex-NASA the evolution of the Here’s how the ship offers a clean, engineers wants to upend subsea transistor is the compact and efficient quiet ride for 4,500 nanosheet device. switching designs in passengers a day. On the cover robotics. Page 22 By Peide Ye, Thomas use today first came By Chun-Lien Su, ­ and this page By Evan Ackerman Ernst & Mukesh into vogue. Josep M. Guerrero Photographs V. Khare By Ken Shirriff & Sheng‑Hua Chen by Ken Kiefer

IEEE SPECTRUM (ISSN 0018-9235) is published monthly by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. © 2019 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., 3 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016-5997, U.S.A. Volume No. 56, Issue No. 8. The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units. Canadian Post International Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 40013087. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Circulation Department, IEEE Spectrum, Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7. Cable address: ITRIPLEE. Fax: +1 212 419 7570. INTERNET: [email protected]. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS: IEEE Members: $21.40 included in dues. Libraries/institutions: $399. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to IEEE Spectrum, c/o Coding Department, IEEE Service Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331, Piscataway, NJ 08855. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Canadian GST #125634188. Printed at 120 Donnelley Dr., Glasgow, KY 42141-1060, U.S.A. IEEE Spectrum circulation is audited by BPA Worldwide. IEEE Spectrum is a member of the Association of Business Information & Media Companies, the Association of Magazine Media, and Association Media & Publishing. IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For more information, visit https://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/whatis/policies/p9-26.html.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 01 BACK STORY_ 08.19

rine. “I couldn’t say yes fast enough,” ­Ackerman says. While reporting “The Under­water Transformer” [p. 22], Ackerman spent two days diving in NASA’s pool, where he got to see what makes Aquanaut a rather remarkable robot: its ability to transform itself from a sleek orange torpedo into a two-armed human- oid that can operate valves and tools ­underwater. But Aquanaut wasn’t the only interest- ing thing in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. With full-scale mock-ups of the Inter­ national Space Station’s main modules taking up most of the pool, there was DIVING WITH ROBOTS AND ASTRONAUTS plenty to see under­water, ­especially when astronauts Mike B­ arratt and Chris EEE Spectrum contributing editor Evan Ackerman is a veteran scuba Cassidy donned their spacesuits and be- diver who has played fetch with sea lions in the Galápagos, spotted an elu- gan training for a spacewalk just a few sive mimic octopus in Indonesia, and been run over by a bull shark in Fiji. meters away. But on his most recent dive trip, Ackerman had a chance to swim with some “Floating there with astronauts on of the rarest underwater creatures on Earth: astronauts. one side of me and a transforming or- “I first saw the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory on a tour of Johnson Space ange robot on the other,” Ackerman Center in 2013,” Ackerman says, describing the huge indoor pool in H­ ouston says, “how many divers have a story I that NASA uses to train astronauts for zero-gravity tasks during space mis- like that to tell?” ■ sions. “Since then, I’ve been trying to find a way to dive there.” That opportunity arrived earlier this year when Nic Radford, chief technol- ogy officer of Houston Mechatronics, called Ackerman and asked if he­ wanted

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02 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG CONTRIBUTORS_

EDITOR IN CHIEF Susan Hassler, [email protected] ADVERTISING PRODUCTION MANAGER EXECUTIVE EDITOR Glenn Zorpette, [email protected] Felicia Spagnoli, [email protected] EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, DIGITAL SENIOR ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Robert N. Charette Harry Goldstein, [email protected] Nicole Evans Gyimah, [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR Elizabeth A. Bretz, [email protected] Contributing editor Charette is an expert on risk EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD, IEEE SPECTRUM SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Susan Hassler, Chair; Steve Blank, David C. Brock, Sudhir Dixit, management and has authored numerous books Mark Montgomery, [email protected] Shahin Farshchi, Limor Fried, Robert Hebner, Jason K. Hui, and articles on the subject. He also writes IEEE SENIOR EDITORS Grant Jacoby, Leah Jamieson, Mary Lou Jepsen, Deepa Kundur, Spectrum’s Risk Factor blog. For this issue’s Spectral Stephen Cass (Resources), [email protected] Norberto Lerendegui, Steve Mann, Allison Marsh, Sofia Olhede, Erico Guizzo (Digital), [email protected] Lines [p. 4], he looks at three large government Jacob Østergaard, Umit Ozguner, John Rogers, Jean Kumagai, [email protected] IT projects that went horribly, expensively awry. Jonathan Rothberg, Umar Saif, Takao Someya, Samuel K. Moore, [email protected] “Government IT project failure is depressingly Maurizio Vecchione, Yu Zheng, Kun Zhou, Edward Zyszkowski Tekla S. Perry, [email protected] unsurprising,” says Charette. “What is surprising, Philip E. Ross, [email protected] EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD, THE INSTITUTE however, is how the consequences of a project’s David Schneider, [email protected] Kathy Pretz, Chair; Qusi Alqarqaz, John Baillieul, Philip Chen, failure continue long past its cancellation date.” DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR Brandon Palacio, [email protected] Shashank Gaur, Susan Hassler, Hulya Kirkici, Cecilia Metra, PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR Randi Klett, [email protected] San Murugesan, Mirela Sechi Annoni Notare, Joel Trussell, ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Erik Vrielink, [email protected] Hon K. Tsang, Chonggang Wang SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR MANAGING DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS Eliza Strickland, [email protected] Michael B. Forster James Provost NEWS MANAGER Amy Nordrum, [email protected] Provost is a technical illustrator based in Toronto. ASSOCIATE EDITORS EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE Willie D. Jones (Digital), [email protected] IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor, His illustration of an in-wheel motor, for Spectrum’s Michael Koziol, [email protected] New York, NY 10016-5997 July 2018 issue, won the SIIA Neal Award for Best SENIOR COPY EDITOR Joseph N. Levine, [email protected] TEL: +1 212 419 7555 FAX: +1 212 419 7570 Infographics. For this issue, he tackled two water- BUREAU Palo Alto, Calif.; Tekla S. Perry +1 650 752 6661 COPY EDITOR Michele Kogon, [email protected] related technologies: an underwater drone [p. 22] EDITORIAL RESEARCHER Alan Gardner, [email protected] DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, and a hybrid-electric ferry [p. 42]. “Making the ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT MEDIA & ADVERTISING Mark David, [email protected] invisible visible is an interesting challenge,” Provost Ramona L. Foster, [email protected] ADVERTISING INQUIRIES Naylor Association Solutions, PHOTOGRAPHY INTERN Erica Snyder says. “Whether it’s on the ocean floor, floating Erik Henson +1 352 333 3443, [email protected] CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Evan Ackerman, Mark Anderson, in space, or under your feet, things are always Robert N. Charette, Peter Fairley, Tam Harbert, Mark Harris, REPRINT SALES +1 212 221 9595, ext. 319 more complex and intriguing below the surface.” David Kushner, Robert W. Lucky, Prachi Patel, Morgen E. Peck, REPRINT PERMISSION / LIBRARIES Articles may be Richard Stevenson, Lawrence Ulrich, Paul Wallich photocopied for private use of patrons. A per-copy fee must EDITOR IN CHIEF, THE INSTITUTE be paid to the Copyright Clearance Center, 29 Congress Kathy Pretz, [email protected] St., Salem, MA 01970. For other copying or republication, Ken Shirriff ASSISTANT EDITOR, THE INSTITUTE contact Managing Editor, IEEE Spectrum. Joanna Goodrich, [email protected] COPYRIGHTS AND TRADEMARKS IEEE Spectrum is a Shirriff was a programmer for Google before DIRECTOR, PERIODICALS PRODUCTION SERVICES Peter Tuohy registered trademark owned by The Institute of Electrical and retiring in 2016. These days, he keeps busy EDITORIAL & WEB PRODUCTION MANAGER Roy Carubia Electronics Engineers Inc. Responsibility for the substance reviving old computer hardware and software. SENIOR ELECTRONIC LAYOUT SPECIALIST Bonnie Nani of articles rests upon the authors, not IEEE, its organizational Most recently, he’s been helping to restore an PRODUCT MANAGER, DIGITAL Shannan Dunlap units, or its members. Articles do not represent official Apollo Guidance Computer. It contains a switching WEB PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Jacqueline L. Parker positions of IEEE. Readers may post comments online; power supply, an important technological advance MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION SPECIALIST Michael Spector comments may be excerpted for publication. IEEE reserves ADVERTISING PRODUCTION +1 732 562 6334 the right to reject any advertising. that came to personal computers in the 1970s, as he describes in “The Quiet Remaking of Computer Power Supplies” [p. 36]. “The power supply worked perfectly after 50 years,” says Shirriff.

IEEE BOARD OF DIRECTORS CORPORATE ACTIVITIES Donna Hourican PRESIDENT & CEO José M.F. Moura, [email protected] +1 732 562 6330, [email protected] Chun-Lien Su +1 732 562 3928 FAX: +1 732 465 6444 MEMBER & GEOGRAPHIC ACTIVITIES Cecelia Jankowski Su, an expert on maritime power and electrical PRESIDENT-ELECT Toshio Fukuda +1 732 562 5504, [email protected] TREASURER Joseph V. Lillie SECRETARY Kathleen A. Kramer STANDARDS ACTIVITIES Konstantinos Karachalios systems, is with the National Kaohsiung University PAST PRESIDENT James A. Jefferies +1 732 562 3820, [email protected] of Science and Technology, in Taiwan. With VICE PRESIDENTS Witold M. Kinsner, Educational Activities; Hulya Kirkici, EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES Jamie Moesch Josep M. Guerrero, an IEEE Fellow with Denmark’s Publication Services & Products; Francis B. Grosz Jr., Member +1 732 562 5514, [email protected] Aalborg University and Sheng-Hua Chen of & Geographic Activities; K.J. “Ray” Liu, Technical Activities; GENERAL COUNSEL & CHIEF COMPLIANCE OFFICER Taiwan’s Ship and Ocean Industries R&D Center, Sophia A. Muirhead +1 212 705 8950, [email protected] Robert S. Fish, President, Standards Association; Thomas M. he writes in this issue about the promise of electric Coughlin, President, IEEE-USA CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER & DIVISION DIRECTORS ACTING CHIEF HUMAN RESOURCES OFFICER propulsion for ferries [p. 42]. Just as electric cars Renuka P. Jindal (I); David B. Durocher (II); Sergio Benedetto Thomas R. Siegert +1 732 562 6843, [email protected] can help clear up local emissions, electric ships (III); John P. Verboncoeur (IV); John W. Walz (V); Manuel Castro TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES Mary Ward-Callan can reduce pollution in and around ports, Su notes. (VI); Bruno Meyer (VII); Elizabeth L. “Liz” Burd (VIII); Alejandro +1 732 562 3850, [email protected] “Alex” Acero (IX); Ljiljana Trajkovic (X) MANAGING DIRECTOR, IEEE-USA Chris Brantley REGION DIRECTORS Babak Dastgheib-Beheshti (1); Wolfram Bettermann (2); +1 202 530 8349, [email protected] Gregg L. Vaughn (3); David Alan Koehler (4); Robert C. Peide Ye Shapiro (5); Keith A. Moore (6); Maike Luiken (7); IEEE PUBLICATION SERVICES & PRODUCTS BOARD Magdalena Salazar-Palma (8); Teófilo J. Ramos (9); Hulya Kirkici, Chair; Derek Abbott, Petru Andrei, Ye is the Richard J. and Mary Jo Schwartz professor Akinori Nishihara (10) John Baillieul, Sergio Benedetto, Ian V. “Vaughan” Clarkson, of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue DIRECTOR EMERITUS Theodore W. Hissey Eddie Custovic, Samir M. El-Ghazaly, Ron B. Goldfarb, University. He, Thomas Ernst, scientific director at Larry Hall, Ekram Hossain, W. Clem Karl, Ahmed Kishk, CEA-Leti in Grenoble, France, and Mukesh V. Khare, IEEE STAFF Aleksandar Mastilovic, Carmen S. Menoni, Paolo Montuschi, vice president of semiconductor and AI hardware at EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & COO Stephen Welby Lloyd A. “Pete” Morley, George Ponchak, Annette Reilly, +1 732 562 5400, [email protected] Sorel Reisman, Gianluca Setti, Gaurav Sharma, Maria Elena IBM Research, have separately developed versions CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Cherif Amirat of a new device called the nanosheet transistor, +1 732 562 6017, [email protected] Valcher, John Vig, Steve Yurkovich, Bin Zhao, Reza Zoughi PUBLICATIONS Michael B. Forster IEEE OPERATIONS CENTER which they describe in this issue [p. 30]. “Nanosheet +1 732 562 3998, [email protected] 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331 transistors are one of the ultimate solutions for CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Karen L. Hawkins Piscataway, NJ 08854-1331 U.S.A. extending Moore’s Law,” Ye says. +1 732 562 3964, [email protected] Tel: +1 732 981 0060 Fax: +1 732 981 1721

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 03 SPECTRAL LINES_ 08.19

old legacy system was canceled in ­January 2013 after seven years and $134 million was spent. This effort followed the previous “hopeless ­failure” project, which was terminated in 1994 for “only” $44 million. Both DMV IT modernization efforts suffered from the same project mismanagement maladies as NPfIT. The lack of a modern California DMV system has caused numerous problems, including long customer waiting lines, incorrect voter registra‑ tions, and issues with the implementation of fed‑ eral Real ID compliance. There were major DMV IT outages in 2016 and 2018, along with an untold number of minor ones—34 IT outages between Jan‑ uary 2017 and mid-August 2018 alone. Before becoming governor, Gavin Newsom stated that any California governor who couldn’t fix the Department of Motor Vehicles “should be recalled.” Long- ­suffering California DMV customers may take Three Enduring his words to heart if the agency isn’t fixed soon. Secure Border Initiative Network. The SBInet Government IT Failures project, organized with the aim of creating a virtual border fence spanning an 85-kilometer section of Costly consequences continue for years the U.S.-Mexico border, was canceled in 2011. Price tag: $1 billion. SBInet’s failure followed the loss of a arge, costly government IT project failures often hit the media combined $450 million by its predecessors, the Inte‑ with a splash but quickly drop from public view. That’s because grated Surveillance Intelligence System and America’s the aftereffects of these failures linger on for years and years, long Shield Initiative. after the media has moved on to cover newer, greener disasters. SBInet was originally supposed to cover Arizona’s As a reminder, here are three spectacular IT project failures that 600-km border with Mexico using what prime con‑ occurred over the past decade, and why the ramifications of each tractor Boeing promised was “proven, low-risk, off- are still being felt today. ¶ United Kingdom’s National Pro- the-shelf technology.” But the technology was anything L gramme for IT (NPfIT). One of the largest IT project failures of but low risk, and incompetent government program any kind was the attempt by the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) to cre‑ oversight and management helped swamp the project. ate a national electronic health record system. The project was canceled After SBInet’s plug was pulled, the U.S. government in September 2011 after blowing through at least £9.8 billion and having poured hundreds of millions more dollars into vir‑ realized only 2 percent of the promised benefits. The NPfIT project began tual fencing technology along the border. Its efficacy in 2002 with a projected price tag of £6 billion and was supposed to be is debatable, with the Government Accountability completed in 2010. ¶ The reasons for the plan’s failure involved all the Office noting in an audit that the U.S. Border Patrol usual suspects: overwhelming project, contracting, and technical com‑ “is limited in its ability to determine the mission ben‑ plexity; a lack of management realism; and simple ineptitude. ¶ Since efits of its surveillance technologies.” then, the U.K. government has spent hundreds of millions of pounds try‑ Despite there being no consensus about what tech‑ ing to keep elements of the NPfIT program operational. Meanwhile, it has nology works well and what doesn’t, a virtual bor‑ undertaken several new efforts at NHS digitalization with mixed results. der wall is being considered once again as a means In February 2016, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that the gov‑ to secure the border. The technology is ready to be ernment would commit £4.2 billion in new funding in order to create a deployed and is much improved over that used before, “paperless” NHS by 2020. However, that amount has now climbed to an say its proponents—the same claim that was made estimated £12.9 billion aimed at achieving new Health and Social Care Sec‑ when SBInet was being oversold. retary Matt Hancock’s grand NHS health IT vision by 2024. Given the gov‑ —Robert N. Charette ernment’s track record, the new cost estimate and schedule are both likely An extended version of this article appears in our Risk too optimistic. ¶ California Department of Motor Vehicles IT Modern- Factor blog. ization. The planned US $208 million, six‑year California Department of Motor Vehicles IT Modernization project to replace its antiquated 40-year- ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/failures0819

04 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Serge Bloch Well-designed power switches, safer electrical systems.

Visualization of the electric losses in the core of a power switch during opening and closing operations, shown from left to right at 50, 100, and 200 ms.

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comsol.blog/magnetic-power-switch In June, the United from the country’s Department Kingdom’s first hydro- of Transport. HYDROGEN gen fuel cell train rolled “In the next few years, we could down the tracks, mark- certainly see a fleet of these oper- ing a milestone in the global push ational in the U.K.,” said Stuart TRAINS for greener transportation. Passen- ­Hillmansen, a researcher at BCRRE. gers climbed aboard the HydroFlex Hillmansen is also a senior lecturer prototype as it ambled through the in electrical energy systems at the ROLL INTO English countryside—without emit- University of Birmingham, where ting any of the pollution that follows BCRRE is based. diesel locomotives. As countries and cities work to SERVICE HydroFlex is a joint initiative of combat climate change, railways the Birmingham Centre for Rail- have become another frontier for A new hybrid locomotive way Research and Education zero-emission technologies. Many signals a growing (BCRRE) and Porterbrook Leas- rail systems around the world still push for zero-emission ing Co., a British railway company. rely on diesel-electric power trains, rail technologies The team demonstrated the four- resulting in soot, smog, and car- car train at a rail testing center bon emissions. In the U.K., trans- in W­ arwickshire. Researchers port officials recently vowed to say they plan to test HydroFlex eliminate the nation’s diesel- on the main U.K. railway net- only locomotives—about 3,900

work later this year, with funding trains—by 2040. EDUCATION AND RESEARCH RAILWAY FOR CENTRE BIRMINGHAM

06 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG 27 more of its Coradia iLint trains for also benefit the regenerative braking sys- European tracks, and it’s developing a tem, which recharges the batteries. For separate model for the U.K. Elsewhere, long-distance and freight trains, which Japan and South Korea are planning make fewer stops, a larger fuel cell and hydrogen trains, and in the United States, smaller battery system are a better fit. officials in California and North Carolina Across the sector, fuel-cell modules are are pursuing projects to convert passen- virtually the same on trains, buses, ferries, ger trains to hydrogen. and heavy-duty trucks. The main differ- “Economically, [fuel cells] can make ences are in the supporting components sense today, where they couldn’t a num- and structural designs that accompany ber of years back,” said Guy M­ cAree, direc- the systems, says Buz McCain, director tor of investor relations for ­Ballard Power of systems engineering at Ballard. Systems, in British ­Columbia, ­Canada. For instance, when designing for The manufacturing company supplied rail, to account for constant vibrations the fuel-cell system for ­HydroFlex and as trains move down the tracks, engi- is working on hydrogen rail projects in neers must dampen the shocks that result Germany and China. from connecting and disconnecting cars. HydroFlex is a hybrid model, designed Unlike HydroFlex, other hydrogen trains to draw most of its power from overhead store their fuel cells on the roof to free up lines or third rails, with the fuel cell kick- cargo and passenger space; this requires ing in where neither option exists. Of the stringing multiple modules together four cars on the converted Class 319 train, across a flat, trapezoidal surface. one holds the good stuff: a­ 100-kilowatt However, the biggest challenge facing proton-exchange membrane fuel-cell hydrogen trains goes beyond the tracks. module; 200-kW of ­lithium-ion batteries; Hydrogen refueling infrastructure is and 20 kilograms of hydrogen, stored lacking worldwide, though transporta- in four high-pressure tanks. tion officials in the U.K. and elsewhere Hydrogen is piped into the fuel cell, are working to install more refueling which then pulls oxygen from the air stations and deploy more fuel trucks. CLEAN MACHINE: To create HydroFlex, to create electricity. That in turn pow- Hydrogen producers are likewise work- engineers retrofitted a British Rail Class 319 ers the traction motors beneath the pas- ing to ramp up supplies—and to develop train with batteries, hydrogen tanks, and a fuel‑cell module [above]. In Germany, two senger cars, with additional electricity cleaner production methods, such as hydrogen-fueled Coradia iLint trains are already stored in the battery bank. Unlike diesel using renewable energy to split water operational [lower right]. locomotive engines, the system doesn’t molecules. —Maria Gallucci emit any sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, To curb diesel use, railway operators or greenhouse gases—just a little heat A version of this article appears in our can electrify networks with overhead and water. Energywise blog. lines or conductive third rails. (About “It’s a very smooth and quiet ride,” ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/ one-third of the world’s track-miles are says Andreas Hoffrichter, a professor in hydrogentrains0819 already electrified; in Europe, Korea, railway management at Michigan State and Japan, the percentage is higher: University, who hopped on HydroFlex about 60 percent.) However, convert- during its demonstration run. He helped ing existing tracks can be prohibitively develop BCRRE’s first locomotive proto- expensive, particularly for ­long-distance, type, Hydrogen Pioneer, as a doctoral low-use networks. As the costs of fuel- researcher at Birmingham. cell modules and batteries decline, Fuel-cell systems on trains can vary hydrogen trains are gaining traction. depending on the power demand profile, In Germany, two such trains entered he says. Light-rail and commuter trains into passenger service last year. Alstom, start and stop frequently, so it makes the French manufacturer that made sense to have a relatively larger battery

ALSTOM them, recently announced it will build and a smaller fuel cell. The frequent stops

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 07 MICROLED DISPLAYS

EXPECTED Ladybug Mojo display IN 2020 (10 mm) (0.48-mm screen) The last remaining hurdle is mastering mass production

One of the most striking things about the prototype microLED display that Sili­ con Valley startup Mojo Vision unveiled in June was its size. At half a millimeter across, it’s barely bigger than a single pixel from the microLED TV prototype Samsung showed off in 2018. That both use versions of the same technology is remarkable, and it por­ tends big potential for screens made of BRIGHT AND TINY: Mojo Vision won’t say exactly what its superdense superefficient and bright micrometer- microLED display [top right] is for—perhaps iPhones for insects? A close-up shows the 14,000-pixel-per-inch display [bottom] in monochrome green. scale gallium nitride LEDs. Impressive prototypes have proliferated during the past year, and now that companies are out in seconds trying to meet half onstrated a throughput-boosting technol­ turning to the hard work of scaling up that brightness. ogy recently, by bonding a wafer full of their manufacturing processes, displays The companies involved broadly fit into Jasper Display Corp.’s silicon CMOS back­ could appear in some products as soon two categories. Some are making mono­ planes to a wafer of its microLED arrays. as late next year. lithic displays, where the gallium nitride New York City’s Lumiode is founded on “We’re seeing really good progress on pixels are made as a complete array on a the idea that such bonding steps aren’t all fronts, and we’re seeing more and chip and a separate silicon backplane con­ necessary. “When you have to bond two more companies coming out with proto­ trols those pixels. And others are using things together, yield is limited by how types,” says Eric Virey, an analyst who “pick and place” technology to transfer that bonding happens,” says Vincent follows the nascent industry for Yole individual LEDs or multi-microLED pixels Lee, the startup’s CEO. Développement. into place on a thin-film-transistor (TFT) Instead Lumiode has been devel­ The driving force behind microLED backplane. The former is suited to micro­ oping a process that allows it to build displays remains a combination of displays for applications like augmented a TFT array on top of a premade GaN brightness and efficiency that LCD and reality and head-up displays. The latter microLED array. That has involved devel­ OLED technology can’t come close to. is a better fit for larger displays. oping ­low-temperature manufacturing One demo of a smartwatch-size display For those in the first camp, a path­ processes gentle enough not to damage by Silicon Valley–based Glo shines at way to a high-throughput, high-yield or degrade the microLEDs. Much of the 4,000 nits (candelas per square meter) technology that bonds the backplane to work this year has been translating that while consuming less than 1 watt. An the microLED array is key. The United process to a low-volume foundry for pro­

equivalent LCD display would burn Kingdom’s Plessey Semiconductors dem­ duction, says Lee. (2) VISION MOJO

08 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG For Glo, the work has been more about making the microLED fit the current- 5G’S WAVEFORM IS delivering capabilities of today’s com- mercial backplanes, like those driving NEWS smartphone displays. “Our device design A BATTERY VAMPIRE is focused on low current—two orders of magnitude lower than solid-state light- As carriers roll out 5G, the industry is considering ing,” on the order of nanoamps or micro- other ways to modulate radio signals amps, explains Glo CEO Fariba Danesh. “This year is the first year people are talk- ing about current. We’ve been talking In 2017, members of the And Kimery notes that these about that for five years.” mobile telephony industry concerns apply beyond 5G hand- Glo takes those microLEDs and places group 3GPP were bickering over sets. China Mobile has “been vocal them on either a CMOS backplane for whether to speed the develop- about the power consumption of microdisplays or on a TFT backplane ment of 5G standards. One pro- their base stations,” he says. A 5G for larger displays using the same tech- posal, originally put forward by base station is generally expected nology for any resolution or display Vodafone and ultimately agreed to consume roughly three times size. The company doesn’t talk about to by the rest of the group, prom- as much power as a 4G base sta- its pick-and-place technology, but it is ised to deliver 5G networks sooner tion. And more 5G base stations key to commercial products. “Our trans- by developing more aspects of 5G are needed to cover the same area. fer yields are right now high enough to technology simultaneously. So how did 5G get into a poten- make some parts; now we are focused on Adopting that proposal may have tially power-guzzling mess? OFDM making thousands and then millions of also meant pushing some decisions plays a large part. Data is trans- zero-defect panels,” says Danesh. down the road. One such decision mitted using OFDM by chopping Others are looking to simplify produc- concerned how 5G networks should the data into portions and send- tion by changing what gets picked up encode wireless signals. 3GPP’s ing the portions simultaneously and placed down. X-Celeprint’s scheme Release 15, which laid the foun- and at different frequencies so is to place an integrated pixel chip that dation for 5G, ultimately selected that the portions are ­“orthogonal” contains both CMOS driver circuits and orthogonal frequency-division mul- (meaning they do not interfere red, green, and blue microLEDs. It’s a tiplexing (OFDM), a holdover from with each other). multistep process, but it means that the 4G, as the encoding option. The trade-off is that OFDM has a display backplane now needs to be only a But Release 16, expected by high peak-to-average power ratio simple-to-manufacture network of wires year’s end, will include the find- (PAPR). Generally speaking, the instead of silicon circuitry. Engineers at ings of a study group assigned to orthogonal portions of an OFDM CEA-Leti, in Grenoble, France, recently explore alternatives. Wireless signal deliver energy construc- demoed a way to simplify that scheme standards are frequently updated, tively—that is, the very quality by transferring the microLEDs to the and in the next 5G release, the that prevents the signals from CMOS drivers all at once in a wafer-to- industry could address concerns wafer bonding process. that OFDM may draw too much “It’s really too early to pick a winner power in 5G devices and base sta- and know which technology is best,” says tions. That’s a problem, because Yole’s Virey. “Some of the prototypes are 5G is expected to require far more quite impressive, but they are not perfect base stations to deliver service yet. A lot of additional work is required and connect billions of mobile and to go from a prototype to a commercial IoT devices. display. You need to improve your cost, “I don’t think the carriers really you need to improve your yield, and you understood the impact on the need to make an absolutely perfect dis- mobile phone, and what it’s going play each time.” —Samuel K. Moore to do to battery life,” says James Kimery, the director of marketing ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/ for RF and software-defined radio CHINA NEWS SERVICE/VCG/GETTY IMAGES SERVICE/VCG/GETTY NEWS CHINA microled0819 research at National Instruments Corp. “5G is going to come with POWER PLAYERS: As carriers launch 5G, some experts say the industry should have a price, and that price is battery chosen a more efficient modulation option consumption.” for the service.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 09 canceling each other out also is how each device’s signals prevents each portion’s energy are encoded, and OFDMA is LASER DETECTS from canceling out the energy the method to make sure that of other portions. That means overall, one device’s signals any receiver needs to be able to don’t interfere with any oth- CANCER take in a lot of energy at once, ers.) The logistics of using dis- and any transmitter needs to be tinct spectrum for each device CELLS IN THE able to put out a lot of energy could quickly spiral out of con- at once. Those high-energy trol for large IoT networks, but instances cause OFDM’s high Release 15 established OFDMA BLOODSTREAM PAPR and make the method for 5G-connected machines, less energy efficient than other largely because it’s what was New treatment counts encoding schemes. used on 4G. and kills cancer cells before Yifei Yuan, ZTE Corp.’s chief One promising alternative they spread engineer of wireless standards, that Yuan’s group is considering, says there are a few emerging non-orthogonal multiple access applications for 5G that make a (NOMA), could deliver the advan- Tumor cells that spread cancer high PAPR undesirable. In par- tages of OFDM while also overlap- via the bloodstream face a new ticular, Yuan, who is also the rap- ping users on the same spectrum. foe: a laser beam, shone from porteur for 3GPP’s study group on For now, Yuan believes OFDM outside the skin, that finds and nonorthogonal ­multiple-access and OFDMA will suit 5G’s early kills these demons on the spot. possibilities for 5G, points to needs. He sees 5G first being used In a study published 12 June in Sc­ ience massive machine-type commu- by smartphones, with applications Translational Medicine, researchers revealed nications, such as large-scale like massive machine-type com- that their system accurately detected these IoT deployments. munications not arriving for at cells in 27 out of 28 people with cancer, with Typically, when multiple least another year or two, after the a sensitivity that is about 1,000 times better users, such as a cluster of IoT completion of Release 16, currently than current technology. In a few patients, devices would communicate scheduled for December 2019. the team was also able to kill a high percent- using OFDM, their communica- But if network providers want age of the cancer-spreading cells, in real time, tions would be organized using to update their equipment to pro- as they raced through participants’ veins. orthogonal frequency-division vide NOMA down the line, there If developed further, the tool could give multiple access (OFDMA), which could very well be a cost. “This doctors a harmless way to hunt and possibly allocates a chunk of spectrum would not come for free,” says destroy such cells before they can form new to each user. (To avoid confu- Yuan. “Especially for the base tumors in the body. “This technology has sion, remember that OFDM station sites.” At the very least, the potential to significantly inhibit metas- base stations would need soft- tasis progression,” says Vladimir Z­ harov, ware updates to handle NOMA, director of the nanomedicine center at the but they might also require more University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, advanced receivers, more pro- who led the research. “5G is going cessing power, or other hard- The spreading of cancer, or metastasis, is ware upgrades. the primary cause of cancer-related death. to come with Kimery, for one, isn’t optimis- Cancer spreads when cells from primary a price, and tic that the industry will adopt tumors break off and travel through the any non-OFDMA options. “It is bloodstream and lymphatic system, set- that price possible there will be an alterna- tling in new areas of the body and forming tive,” he says. “The probability secondary tumors. Killing these circulating is battery isn’t great. Once something gets tumor cells, or CTCs, in the bloodstream implemented, it’s hard to shift.” could help prevent metastasis and save lives. consumption.” —Michael Koziol Simply being able to count CTCs could help —James Kimery, doctors more accurately diagnose and treat ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum. National Instruments ieee.org/5G0819 metastatic cancer, and that’s what the new

10 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG aimed. He cautions that killing the cancer cells in this study must be tested further. The new technique is also specific to the pigmentation of melanoma CTCs. Detecting circulating tumor cells from other cancers would require inject- ing into the bloodstream some kind of photoacoustic contrast agent, such as gold nanoparticles. Zharov came up with the idea for the technique more than a decade ago, and since then has been testing it in animals and demonstrating its safety to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, whose approval was required before proceeding with the clinical trial. He says the device is the first noninvasive CTC diagnostic to be demonstrated in humans. At least 100 other devices designed to monitor CTCs have been proposed. These systems typically involve drawing blood from a vein and analyzing it outside the tool does best. “Truly noninvasive detec- BULL’S-EYE: Researchers used lasers body. Only one such device has received tion like this, using harmless light to give generated by this device to detect and approval from the FDA: a machine called destroy tumor cells in the veins of patients real-time readouts of anything that looks with melanoma. CellSearch that’s about the size of an oven. like a cancer cell—that’s pretty exciting,” It handles small samples of blood, provid- says Michael King, a biomedical engineer CTCs. But even with the laser in a low- ing only a snapshot of the CTCs that might at Vanderbilt University. energy diagnostic mode, it killed a sig- be present in the whole bloodstream. Con- Zharov and his team tested their sys- nificant number of CTCs in six patients. sequently, this kind of diagnostic isn’t tem in people with melanoma, the most “In one patient, we destroyed 96 percent broadly used in standard cancer care. dangerous type of skin cancer. The laser, of the tumor cells” that crossed the laser In April, researchers at the University beamed at a vein, sends energy to the beam, says Zharov. of Michigan announced some progress bloodstream, creating heat. Melanoma King says he’s not convinced that the in this area. Their wrist-worn device CTCs absorb more of this energy than laser could clear the bloodstream of CTCs. pumps blood out of the body, captures normal cells, causing them to heat up “I think we’re a long ways off from that,” he CTCs, and then pumps the cleansed quickly and expand. says. “There’s lots of blood volume that’s blood back in. Still, in a study in dogs, Because of what’s known as the not going to pass through that particular the device processed only 30 milliliters ­photoacoustic effect, this thermal patch of skin” where the laser beam is of blood over two to three hours. expansion produces sound waves, which Zharov’s device can examine a liter can be recorded by a small ultrasound of blood in about an hour, without the transducer placed over the skin near blood ever leaving the body. Its sen- the laser. The recordings indicate when sitivity is about 1,000 times that of a CTC is passing by. ­CellSearch. Next, Zharov and his col- The same laser can also kill the CTCs leagues aim to test the device on more in real time, according to the research people, and combine it with conven- team. Heat from the laser causes vapor tional cancer therapies. —Emily Waltz bubbles to form on the tumor cells. The bubbles expand and collapse, mechani- A version of this article appears in our cally destroying the cell. Human OS blog. INVASION: Obtaining a more accurate count of The purpose of the study was to test cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream could ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/

E.I. (2) GALANZHA E.I. the accuracy of the device in detecting help physicians recognize metastatic cancer. cancercells0819

NEWS

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 11 12 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG PHOTOGRAPH BY Lisa Ducret/picture alliance/Getty Images AI OPERATOR STANDING BY

SINCE JUNE, people passing through the main railway station in Berlin have had the option of getting answers to some of travelers’ most frequently asked questions from a robot. Deutsche Bahn’s new customer- service agent, called Semmi (short for Socio- Empathetic Human- Machine Interaction), gets its smarts from artificial intelligence and its speaking voice from a cloud-based voice user interface. Semmi, which speaks German, English, and seven other languages, not only provides up-to-the-minute train arrival and departure schedules, but acts as a digital concierge, giving information about and directions to restaurants and other facilities inside and close to the station. Its debut came after its sibling, FRAnny, had a successful trial run earlier this year at Frankfurt Airport.

THETHE BIG BIG PICTUREPICTURE newsNEWS

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 13 framework for running pretrained neural net- MAKING MACHINE LEARNING works—also known as models—on so-called ARDUINO COMPATIBLE edge devices. Last April, IEEE ­Spectrum’s Hands On column looked at Google’s Coral A GAMING HANDHELD THAT RUNS Dev Board, a single-boar­ d computer that’s NEURAL NETWORKS based on the Raspberry Pi form factor, de- signed to run TensorFlow Lite models. The Coral incorporates a dedicated tensor pro- WANT TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE BRING cessing unit and is powerful enough to machine learning to cheap, robust devices that can have all kinds process a live video feed and recognize hun-

I RESOURCES_HANDS ON of sensors and work in all kinds of environments. And I want you to dreds of objects. Unfortunately for my plan, it help. The kind of AI we can squeeze into a US $30 or $40 system won’t beat costs $150 and requires a hefty power sup- anyone at Go, but it opens the door to applications we might never even imag- ply, and its bulky heat sink and fan limit how ine otherwise. • Specifically, I want to bring machine learning to the Arduino it can be packaged. ecosystem. This has become recently possible thanks to improvements in hard- But fortunately for my plan, Pete ­Warden ware and software. • On the hardware side, Moore’s Law may be running out of and his team have done amazing work in steam when it comes to cutting-edge processors, but the party’s not over when bringing TensorFlow Lite to chips based it comes to microcontrollers. Microcontrollers based on 8-bit automatic-voice- on ARM’s Cortex family of processors. recognition processors dominated the Arduino ecosystem’s early years, for ex- This was great to discover, because at my ample, but in more recent years, embedded-chip­ makers have moved toward open-source hardware company, Adafruit more powerful ARM-based chips. We can now put enough processing power Industries­ , our current favorite processor into these cheap, robust de­ vices to rival desktop PCs of the mid 1990s. • On is the 32-bit SAMD51, which incorporates the software side, a big step has been the release of Google’s TensorFlow Lite, a a ­Cortex-M4 CPU. We’ve used the SAMD51 (3) ADAFRUIT INDUSTRIES

14 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG work, the RAM requirements are far beyond the 2 kB of the Arduino Uno, for example). I found the source code well written, so the biggest challenge became under- standing how it handles incoming data. Data is not digested as a simple linear stream but in overlapping chunks. I also wanted to expose the code’s capabilities in a way that would be familiar to Arduino programmers and wouldn’t overwhelm them. I identified the functions most likely to be useful to programmers, so that data could be easily fed into a model from a sensor, such as a microphone, and the re- sults outputted to the rest of the program- mer’s code for them to handle as they wish. I then created an Arduino library incorpo- rating these functions, which you can find on Adafruit’s Github repository. Putting it all together, I wrote a short program using the new library. Now when I press a button and speak into the ­PyGamer’s attached microphone, the ap- propriate Tron clip is triggered if I say “yes” or “no,” letting me walk around with my own animated sidekick. Although this project is a limited (but fun) intro to machine learning, I hope it persuades more makers and engineers as the basis for many of our recent and up- A BIT OF FUN: After she created an Arduino- to combine AI with hardware explorations. coming Arduino-compatible boards, includ- compatible version of TensorFlow Lite, the author adapted a voice-recognition demo so that pressing Our next steps at Adafruit will be to make it ing the PyGamer, a simple battery-powered a button and speaking into a microphone attached easier to install different models and create gaming handheld. What if we could use it to to a SAMD51-based PyGamer would play back new ones. With 200 kB of RAM, you could literally put AI into people’s hands? different animations. have a model capable of recognizing 10 to Warden had created a speech-recognition 20 words. But even more exciting than voice model that can identify the words “yes” and sidekick of sorts, a single bit that can say only recognition is the prospect of using these “no” in an analog audio feed. I set about seeing “yes” or “no,” with an accompanying change cheap boards to gather data and run mod- if I could bring this to the PyGamer, and what of shape. The PyGamer has a 1.8-inch col- els built around very different kinds of sig- I might do with a model that could recognize or display, with 192 kilobytes of RAM and nals. Can we use data from the PyGamer’s only two words. I wanted to create a project 8 megabytes of flash file storage, enough onboard accelerometer to learn how to dis- that would spark the imagination of makers to display snippets of video from Tron show- tinguish the user’s movements in doing dif- and encourage them to start exploring ma- ing the bit’s “yes” and “no” responses. The ferent tasks? Could we pool data and train chine learning on this kind of hardware. ­PyGamer’s SAMD51 processor normally runs a model to, say, recognize the sound of a I decided to make it as playful as possible. at 120 megahertz, which I overclocked to failing servo or a switching power supply? The more playful something is, the more for- 200 MHz for a performance boost. I connect- What surprises could lie in store? The only givable its mistakes—there’s a reason why ed an electret microphone breakout board to way to find out is to try. —LIMOR FRIED Sony’s artificial pet Aibo was given the form one of the PyGamer’s three JST ports. of a puppy, because real puppies are clumsy Then I turned to the trickiest task: porting Editor’s note: Limor Fried is a member of and sometimes run into walls, or don’t fol- the TensorFlow Lite ARM code written by IEEE Spectrum’s editorial board. low instructions. Warden and company into a library that any I recalled the original Tron movie, where the ­Arduino programmer can use ­(although not POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/ hero is stuck in cyberspace and picks up a for every Arduino board! Even as a “lite” frame- arduino0819

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 15 RESOURCES_GEEK LIFE

THE HIDDEN BEAUTY OF COMPONENTS ERIC SCHLAEPFER DISSECTS OVERLOOKED PARTS

s we’ve remarked in these A pages before, oftentimes some of the best engineering around Outer shield drain wire Outer shield braid (copper) is invisible, hidden inside black boxes of one (aluminium) sort or the other. If the black box is sufficiently

important in some way, professional forensic Horizontal sync (coax) and reverse engineers can be employed to crack it open and reveal its secrets. But what about more humble items, such as the appar- ently unremarkable components that make

up everyday electronics? Who cares enough Foil to take the trouble to look inside them? Eric Schlaepfer does. To the delight of a growing following, in March of this year, ­Schlaepfer started posting to his @TubeTimeUS twitter account magnified cross sections of capacitors, cables, LEDs, PVC jacket transistors, and more, usually with accom- panying annotations. His photography project began in a mo- ment of idle curiosity, after fixing an old func- tion generator that he used to test other RGB (3 coaxes) Five smaller wires are: circuits. He’d just finished replacing a num- V sync, SDA, SCL, +5V, GND ber of capacitors. “I was kind of staring down at my desk, looking at these dead tantalum ca- pacitors, and I picked one up,” he says. “I was just going to throw it in the waste can, but then I realized that I don’t really know what’s inside these things, and it might actually be interest- who began sanding down every component 555 timer chip using discrete transistors and ing to take a look inside…so I just took out a he could find. resistors, and which IEEE Spectrum featured sheet of sandpaper and started going at it.” Schlaepfer usually has plenty of candidates in our March 2014 issue. Schlaepfer took photos of the results and on hand. He is a hardware engineer at Google The components take Schlaepfer anywhere tweeted them, where they quickly drew a who’s also well known in the maker and vin- from a few minutes to several hours to prepare, positive response. Encouraged, Schlaepfer tage electronics communities and a frequent gradually moving to finer and finer grades of dug around in his junk box, pulled out a stan- visitor to electronic flea markets, so he always sandpaper. (He’s tried using electrical sanders dard quarter-watt carbon film resistor, and has. He is the creator of the MOnSter 6502, and cutters to speed things up, but he says he sanded away. He got another wave of posi­ a replica of the legendary 6502 processor has the best luck with sand­paper and elbow tive responses. “It’s the sort of component made using thousands of surface mount tran- grease.) To take photographs of the exposed that most hobbyists have experience with, sistors, and he also created the Three Fives kit, surfaces, Schlaepfer typically uses an old in-

right? People really like that,” says ­Schlaepfer, which lets you build a version of the venerable spection microscope and simply holds his cell- (6) TIME SCHLAEPFER/TUBE ERIC

16 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG HUMBLE COMPLEXITY: Eric Schlaepfer’s cross phone’s camera over the eyepiece. For items actually cut one in half in the axial direction, sections of everyday components reveal hidden that are too large for the microscope, he uses I didn’t know that it had this really interesting masterpieces of engineering. Schlaepfer usually posts both annotated and unannotated images of a Nikon D40 DSLR with a 105-mm macro lens. looking set of two interlocking spirals, which objects that include [clockwise from top left] an “There’s a sort of a surprising beauty in a was the two plates of the capacitor.” Apple MagSafe 2 connector (note the surface- lot of these components,” says ­Schlaepfer. Schlaepfer also makes his cross sections mount LEDs); a BNC plug and jack; a 3.5-millimeter plug and headphone jack; a 2N2222 transistor in a He notes that although engineers often have publicly available on the Wikimedia Com- TO-18 package; a two‑color LED; and a VGA cable. knowledge of how a component works in the mons and is mulling a coffee-table book, al- abstract, the actual physical structure can be though if he did that he’d “have to invest in a unexpected: “For example, I know that an bit more complex photography rig!” he says, electrolytic capacitor is made up of foil ele- laughing. —STEPHEN CASS ments, wound with a paper material in be- POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/ tween that holds the electrolyte.... But until I magnified0819

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 17 RESOURCES_CAREERS

BREXIT PUSHES TECH WORKERS FROM BRITAIN TO IRELAND CONFUSION ABOUT THE FUTURE IS CHANGING RECRUITMENT

he European Union and the The result has been confusion for ­businesses “But now we’re mental busy. And the taps just T United Kingdom have been em- and workers, especially those in industries don’t seem to turn off, which is great for us.” broiled in Brexit for the last few with a relatively mobile workforce, like tech. Traditionally, in the flow of tech workers years, with no clear end in sight. The U.K.’s Consequently, tech recruitment firms between the two countries, it was rare for withdrawal from the EU is currently set for based in other EU countries, such as the people to move from the U.K. to Ireland, ac- 31 October. However, disarray within the ­Republic of Ireland, have seen an uptick cording to Rose Farrell, a senior recruiter British government means that no one is in activity. at nineDots. sure if the U.K. will leave on that date or, if it “We set this company up two years ago, “I don’t think I’ve ever heavily recruited from does, under what terms. The fear of a no-deal and we’ve been consistently busy,” says Cian the U.K.,” explains Farrell. “People in the tech Brexit—in which the U.K. cr­ ashes out of the Crosse, managing director of Dublin-based industry in the U.K. prefer to work on a con-

EU with no agreed transition—looms over all. nineDots, a technology recruitment firm. tract basis. And the rates are much, much ISTOCKPHOTO

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18 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG higher than the Irish market can pay, so we ing has become in Ireland,” says Crosse. so they can hit the ground running in their new just can’t afford them.” To address this issue, some of the multi­ job,” says Crosse. —DEXTER JOHNSON However, the dynamics are changing. nationals are offering relocation packages Crosse and Farrell are witnessing a lot more that include two or three months of accom- A version of this article appears on our movement from the U.K. to Ireland. “Before, modation. “Companies want to make sure that Tech Talk blog. we just ignored the U.K. market for employees,” the people they recruit have someplace to live POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/ says Crosse. But now, U.K.-based workers “are when they arrive with their bags in their hands, brexit0819 a lot more open to the prospect at this point.” Crosse and Farrell have also witnessed a substantial increase in multinational com- panies opening offices in Ireland. The issue New Version! for multinationals that are already headquar- tered in the U.K., or even run a large part of their operations out of the U.K., is that they don’t know if they’ll have access to the entire EU employee pool or only the pool available in the U.K., according to Crosse. “It has just made more sense for a number of companies from the U.K. to set up their op- erations here in Ireland,” says Crosse. After so many years of uncertainty, whether or not a no-deal Brexit occurs, or even if Brexit is sus- pended, “I think companies have kind of said, ‘They’ve made their bed. They can lie in it,’ so to speak,” says Crosse. Brexit uncertainty is also affecting non-EU multinational firms. Ireland has long been at- tractive for these companies because of its relatively low corporate tax rate. However, Crosse believes he’s witnessing something different because of Brexit. “We’ve been helping some large U.S.- based companies get established in Europe,” said Crosse. “They were looking at the U.K., but it just makes more sense for them to set up here along with everybody else in the EU.” Crosse further explains that Ireland is also attractive for U.S.-based companies because if Brexit goes ahead, Ireland will be the only primarily English-speaking country in the EU. However, this rosy picture for Ireland must be balanced against other Brexit-related Over 75 New Features & Apps in Origin 2019! For a FREE 60-day problems, including potential economic Over 500,000 registered users worldwide in: evaluation, go to and political impacts arising from the re- ◾ 6,000+ Companies including 20+ Fortune Global 500 OriginLab.Com/demo imposition of border controls between the ◾ 6,500+ Colleges & Universities and enter code: 8547 ­Republic and Northern Ireland. There is also ◾ 3,000+ Government Agencies & Research Labs a continuing housing crisis, and the recent influx of multinationals setting up in Ireland has exacerbated the problem. 25+ years serving the scientific & engineering community “When we start talking to both compa- nies and employees, one of the first things we have to discuss is how expensive hous-

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 19 INTERNET OF EVERYTHING_BY STACEY HIGGINBOTHAM OPINION

would make hospitals more accessible to the elderly and those with disabilities. This design philosophy doesn’t have to be limited to the hospital, however. Autonomous cars will likely need road signs that are different from the ones we’ve grown accustomed to. Current road signs are easily read by humans, but they could be vandalized so as to trick autonomous vehicles into interpreting them incorrectly. Delivery drones will need markers to navigate as well as places to land, if Amazon wants to get serious about delivering packages this way. Google has already developed one solu- tion. Back in 2014, the company invented plus codes. These are short codes for places that don’t traditionally have street names and numbers, such as a residence in a São Paulo favela or a point along an oil pipeline. These codes are readable by humans and machines, thus making the world a little more bot friendly. Augmented reality (AR) also stands to benefit from this new design philosophy. Mark Rolston is the founder and chief cre- ative officer of ArgoDesign, a company that REMAKING THE WORLD helps tech companies design their prod- ucts. Rolston has found that bringing AR— FOR ROBOTS such as Magic Leap’s head-mounted virtual retinal display—into offices and homes can be tough, depending on the EVERY TIME I’M IN A CAR IN EUROPE and bumping along a nar- environment. For example, the Magic row, cobblestone street, I am reminded that our physical buildings Leap reads glass walls as blank space, and infrastructure don’t always keep up with our technology. Whether which results in AR images that are too we’re talking about cobblestone roads or the lack of Ethernet cables faint to show up on the surface. in the walls of old buildings, much of our established architecture stays the same AR also struggles with white or dark while technology moves forward. • But embracing augmented reality, autono- walls. Rolston says the ideal wall is mous vehicles, and robots gives us new incentives to redevelop our physical envi- painted a light gray and has curved ronments. To really get the best experience from these technologies, we’ll have to edges rather than sharp corners. While create what Carla Diana, an established industrial designer and author, calls the he doesn’t expect every room in an office “robot-readable world.” • Diana works with several businesses that make connected or home to follow these guidelines, he devices and robots. One such company is Diligent Robotics, of Austin, Texas, which is does think we’ll start seeing a shift in building Moxi, a one-handed robot designed for hospitals. Moxi will help nurses and design to accommodate AR needs. orderlies by taking on routine tasks, such as fetching supplies and lab results, that In other words, we’ll still see the occa- don’t require patient interaction. However, many hospitals weren’t designed with sional cobblestone street and white wall, rolling robots with pinchers for hands in mind. • Moxi can’t open every kind of door but more and more we’ll see our physi- or use the stairs, so its usefulness is limited in the average hospital. For now, Diligent cal structures accommodate our tech- sends a human helper for Moxi during test runs. But the company’s thinking is that focused society. n if hospitals see the value in an assistive robot, they might change their door handles ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/ and organize supplies around ramps, not stairs. The bonus is that these changes robotfriendly0819

20 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY Edmon de Haro NUMBERS DON’T LIE_BY VACLAV SMIL OPINION

siderably larger than the known diversity of mammals (fewer than 5,500 species). Even if we were to concede that mobile phones are just varieties of a single species (like the Bengal, Siberian, and ­Sumatran tigers), there are many other numbers that illustrate how species-rich our designs are. The World Steel Association lists about 3,500 grades of steel, more than all known species of rodents. Screws are another supercategory: Add up the combinations based on screw materials (aluminum to titanium), screw types (from cap to dry- wall, from machine to sheet metal), screw heads (from washer-faced to countersunk), screw drives (from slot to hex, from ­Phillips to Robertson), screw shanks and tips (from die point to cone point), and screw dimen- sions (in metric and other units), and you end up with many millions of possible screw “species.” Taking a different tack, we have also surpassed nature in the range of mass. ANIMALS VS. ARTIFACTS: The smallest land mammal, the ­Etruscan shrew, weighs as little as 1.3 grams, WHICH ARE MORE DIVERSE? whereas the largest, the African elephant, averages about 5 metric tons. That’s a range of six orders of magnitude. Mass- OUR COUNT OF LIVING SPECIES REMAINS INCOMPLETE. produced mobile-phone vibrator motors In the 250-plus years since Carl Linnaeus set up the modern taxonomic match the shrew’s weight, while the larg- system, we have classified about 1.25 million species, about three-quarters est centrifugal compressors driven by elec- of them animals. Another 17 percent are plants, and the remainder are tric motors weigh around 50 metric tons, fungi and microbes. And that’s the official count—the still-unrecognized number of spe- for a range of seven orders of magnitude. cies could be several times higher still. • The diversity of man-made objects is easily as The smallest bird, the bee humming- rich. Although my comparisons involve not just those proverbial apples and oranges but bird, weighs about 2 grams, whereas the apples and automobiles, they still reveal what we have wrought. • I begin constructing largest flying bird, the Andean condor, my parallel taxonomy with the domain of all man-made objects. This domain is equiva- can reach 15 kilograms, for a range of lent to the Eukarya, all organisms having nuclei in their cells. It contains the kingdom nearly four orders of magnitude. Today’s of complex, multicomponent designs, equivalent to Animalia. Within that kingdom we miniature drones weigh as little as have the phylum of designs powered by electricity, equivalent to the Chordata, crea- 5 grams versus a fully loaded ­Airbus 380, tures with a dorsal nerve cord. Within that phylum is a major class of portable designs, which weighs 570 metric tons—a differ- equivalent to Mammalia. Within that class is the order of communications artifacts, ence of eight orders of magnitude. equivalent to Cetacea, the class of whales, dolphins, and porpoises, and it contains the And our designs have a key functional family of phones, equivalent to Delphinidae, the oceanic dolphins. • Families contain advantage: They can work and survive genera, such as Delphinus (common dolphin), Orcinus (orcas), and Tursiops (bottlenose pretty much on their own, unlike our dolphins) in the ocean. And, according to GSM Arena, which monitors the industry, bodies (and those of all animals), which in early 2019 there were more than 110 mobile-phone genera (brands). Some genera depend on a well-functioning micro­ contain a single specific species—for instance,Orcinus contains only Orcinus orca, the biome: There are at least as many bac- killer whale. Other genera are species-rich. In the mobile-phone realm none is richer terial cells in our guts as there are cells in than Samsung, which now includes nearly 1,200 devices. It is followed by LG, with our organs. That’s life for you. n more than 600, and Motorola and Nokia, each with nearly 500 designs. Altogether, ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/ in early 2019 there were some 9,500 different mobile “species”—and that total is con- species0819

ILLUSTRATION BY Chad Hagen SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 21 THE UNDERWATER

TRANS FORM

ER INTO THE BLUE: The robot Aquanaut floats underwater during a test at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.

Ex-NASA engineers built a robot sub that transforms into a skilled humanoid

BY EVAN ACKERMAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEN KIEFER

23 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG THE UNDERWATER TRANSFORMER

1 2

More Than Meets the Eye

Aquanaut is unique among unmanned underwater vehicles because it can transform itself from a nimble submarine designed for long-distance cruising ONCE THE ROBOT into a half-humanoid robot AQUANAUT TRAVELS ARRIVES AT THE capable of carrying out complex IN STREAMLINED SITE, THE TOP PART SUBMARINE MODE OF ITS HULL RISES manipulation tasks. Here’s how TO A SUBSEA UP, EXPOSING TWO the transformation happens. WORK SITE. MASSIVE ARMS AND A WEDGE- SHAPED HEAD.

I’m drifting weightlessly, in a silence broken only by my own breathing and the occasional update from Mission Just a short Control in my headset. But this isn’t the dark void of space. I’m in Houston, scuba diving in a massive swimming pool distance that NASA uses to train astronauts for zero-gravity environ- ments. And though it’s a thrill to watch the space-suited away from me, figures at work, I didn’t come to see them. I’m here for a peek at Aquanaut, the bright orange robot that we’re shar- two astronauts ing the pool with. Aquanaut glides smoothly through the water like a miniature submarine. At first, it doesn’t seem all that are practicing for different from other unmanned underwater vehicles, or UUVs, equipped with sensors for gathering data a spacewalk. and thrusters for propulsion. Then, in what could be a scene from the movie Transformers, the top part of the robot’s hull rises up from the base, exposing two mas- sive arms that unfold from either side. A wedge-shaped head packed full of sensors rotates into place, and in a

matter of seconds, the transformation is complete. The (4) HOUSTON MECHATRONICS

24 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG 3 4

THE HEAD, CARRYING THE ROBOT UNFOLDS STEREO CAMERAS, ITS POWERFUL ARMS, A 3D SENSOR, AND EQUIPPED WITH FORCE A SONAR SYSTEM, SENSORS AND CLAWLIKE ROTATES INTO PLACE. GRIPPERS.

sleek submarine is now a half-humanoid robot, ready decades, largely because of the challenge of working in such to get to work. an extreme environment. For HMI, however, that’s not a Aquanaut represents a radical new design that its cre- problem: Of its 75 employees, over two dozen used to work ators, at a startup called Houston Mechatronics Inc. (HMI), for NASA. Extreme environments are what they’re best at. hope will completely change subsea robotics. Conventional HMI cofounder and chief technology officer Nic Radford UUVs typically fit into two categories: torpedo-like free- spent 14 years working on advanced robotics projects at swimming submersibles, which are used for long-distance NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in Houston. “I’ll grant you survey missions, and boxy remotely operated machines, that getting into space is harder than getting underwater,” which are tethered to support vessels and used for under- he says. “But space is a pristine environment. Under­water, water manipulation. HMI wants to combine both of these things are extraordinarily dynamic. I haven’t decided yet modes into a single robot. It’s a bold approach that no one whether it’s 10 times harder or 50 times harder for robots has attempted before. working underwater than it is in space.” The HMI engineers, who often joke that building a Trans- Radford and fellow cofounders Matt Ondler and Reg former has been one of their long-term career objectives, are Berka have raised more than US $23 million in venture convinced that it can be done. Aquanaut has been designed capital since starting HMI in 2014. Now, after countless primarily for servicing subsea oil and gas installations. The design iterations, Aquanaut is finally coming together. companies that own and operate this infrastructure spend Before taking to the open ocean, though, the robot needs vast sums of money to inspect and maintain it. They rely on to prove itself in more controlled conditions, and that robotic technologies that haven’t fundamentally changed in means a swim in NASA’s pool.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 25 THE UNDERWATER TRANSFORMER

Holding 23.5 million liters of water and with a maximum “The type of skills that we have at NASA,” he says, “putting depth of 12 meters, NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, robots in remote locations, and getting them to do useful or NBL, is large enough to contain a full-scale mock-up of work in austere data environments, best matched this big most of the International Space Station, with room to spare. problem: working offshore.” Astronauts train for spacewalks at the NBL, coming just Most of what we see and hear about the offshore oil and about as close to weightlessness as you can get here on the gas industry involves work done from platforms, where ground. On this late-March morning, HMI has taken over people conduct underwater drilling operations from the the north end of the facility to test Aquanaut. surface. The platforms are the most visible part of the pro- Ten meters down and with two tanks of nitrox on my cess, but there’s an enormous amount of complex infra- back, I try to keep myself steady as I track the robot mov- structure on the seabed as well. ing through the water. Aquanaut has been in one piece for Wellheads on the ocean floor are capped by metal assem- only about eight days now, but the testing is going well. blies used to control the flow of hydrocarbons to the surface. The only hiccup is a communication glitch with the arms, These structures, covered with pipes, valves, manifolds, but the HMI team is unfazed; they know there’s still a lot of and gauges, are so intricate they are commonly known as work to do, and the robot will be back here early tomorrow. Christmas trees. Some are the size of a four-story building. Radford tells me he enjoys the frenetic routine of run- To perform routine maintenance on a wellhead, or to ning a startup, a sharp contrast with the typical pace of a change the output of the well, some of the valves on the huge government agency like NASA. Before HMI, he spent tree have to be turned, and with wells in deep water— five years as chief engineer of NASA’s Robonaut program, below 300 meters, where divers normally don’t operate— developing a humanoid robot that flew to the Interna- the only way to do that is with a robotic vehicle. tional Space Station, and he later led the development of For decades, the established procedure for working on Valkyrie, an even more sophisticated humanoid platform. deepwater wells has been to send out a remotely oper- In his office at HMI, small 3D-printed models of Aquanaut ated underwater vehicle, or ROV, to the well site. But you prototypes fit right in with wall art featuring Valkyrie and can’t just send the ROV by itself—you also have to send a Marvel’s Iron Man. large support vessel packed with highly trained people to serve as a base of operations for the ROV, which has little or no autonomy and is tethered to the surface for power and control. This gets very expensive very quickly, Aquatic with typical jobs costing tens to hundreds of thousands Handyman of dollars per day. HMI’s plan is to cut the cord—cutting out most of the need In submarine mode, Aquanaut surveys and inspects oil and gas for people along with it. Aquanaut will not require a tether or equipment deployed on the seabed. In humanoid mode, the robot uses its arms to grasp specialized tools and operate valves that a support ship. It will travel in submarine mode to its deep- control the flow of hydrocarbons to the surface. water destination, where it’ll transform into its humanoid form, unfolding its powerful arms. Each arm is equipped with force-torque sensors and has eight axes of motion, similar to that of a human arm. The arms on A­ quanaut also have grippers capable of turning valves on the subsea “trees” and even operating specialized maintenance tools that the robot carries with it in an internal payload bay. Aquanaut will carry out tasks with human operators supervising but not directly controlling it. And once the job is finished, the robot will autonomously return home. Radford says the approach will make Aquanaut both faster to deploy and cheaper to operate than today’s ROVs. He estimates that costs could be well below half the market rate of a traditional operation. The timing seems right. According to Chuck Richards, a subsea technology pioneer who is currently chair of the ROV Committee of the Marine Technology Society, based in Washington, D.C., the low price of oil over the

26 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY James Provost SMART SUB: Engineers from Houston Mechatronics inspect Aquanaut’s head, where the robot’s main sensors are located, in preparation for an underwater test [top]. While conventional unmanned underwater vehicles require human operators to maneuver them in real time, Aquanaut uses its sensing and computing systems to behave with greater autonomy, able to carry out tasks with operators supervising but not directly controlling it [bottom].

past several years has cut profits and led to increased from a relatively small boat, or even dropped out of a heli- competition among oil companies, driving the adoption copter, the robot can travel more than 200 ­kilometers in of new technologies. Richards, whose firm, C.A. ­Richards submarine mode. Once it arrives, the robot transforms & Associates, in Houston, supplies equipment to dozens into ROV mode, with additional thrusters hidden inside of subsea companies—HMI among them—explains that the hull folding out to make it more maneuverable. while the industry will likely be cautious about an inno- The transformation itself was another major challenge— vation like Aquanaut, it will also be excited to see what and a source of much internal debate. “We fought ourselves the robot can do. the whole way trying to prove that we didn’t need to do Richards explains that when the benefits of commercial it,” says Sandeep Yayathi, Aquanaut’s chief engineer, who ROV technology became evident after its introduction in the prior to HMI was the power lead on the Lunar Prospector 1970s, the industry was eager to embrace it, even though rover at NASA. But the group eventually decided that the things were a little rough in the beginning. “The oil com- benefits outweighed the added complexity: They were panies were very helpful and patient with the ROV indus- going to build their underwater Transformer. try as it matured,” he says, “and I think they’ll be the same To enable Aquanaut to alter its shape so drastically, way with a more autonomous vehicle.” the robot is equipped with four custom linear actua- tors that separate the top and bottom halves of its body. Aquanaut’s main advantage over conventional ROVs Additional motors, also highly customized and housed depends on its untethered operation, and HMI had to solve in waterproof cases, drive the arms and the head. For several key problems to enable that capability. The first is power, Aquanaut uses a lithium-ion battery similar to simply getting the robot to the offshore work site without those found in electric cars. The full transformation cur-

EVAN ACKERMAN (2) ACKERMAN EVAN a large support vessel. While Aquanaut could be deployed rently takes just 30 seconds.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 27 THE UNDERWATER TRANSFORMER

But perhaps none of these challenges is as significant as designing Aquanaut’s control system. Traditional ROVs have multiple live camera feeds, and human operators maneuver these vehicles with joysticks in real time. With- out a tether, the only way to communicate with ­Aquanaut is through an acoustic modem. This well-established tech- nology has a range of a few tens of kilometers underwater, at the price of high latency and very low bandwidth, in the neighborhood of a few kilobytes per second, at best. HMI plans to rely on small unmanned surface vessels to act as relays between the robot and communication sat- ellites, and from there, Aquanaut can be controlled from anywhere in the world. However, these constraints make direct human control impractical, so Aquanaut will need to do as much as it can on its own. “There’s a lot of autonomy that has to be built in,” Yayathi explains. “You trust the robot to do a lot.” HMI is planning on maintaining high-level supervisory control over Aquanaut, while delegating most of the low- level decisions to the robot’s powerful onboard computers, which run the Robot Operating System, or ROS, a popular software platform for research and commercial robots. Using the sensor suite in the head, which includes stereo cameras, a structured light sensor, and a sonar system, the robot constructs a detailed 3D rendering of its surround- ings. But instead of trying to send the entire 3D map back to the operator, only very small and highly compressed sub- sections are transmitted, and the operator can then match them to an existing model of the structure that ­Aquanaut is looking at. The operator then sends simple commands, such as “Turn the valve at these coordinates 90 degrees clockwise.” The robot will autonomously decide how to grasp the valve and how much force to apply while turning, and it will send back a confirmation when the task is complete. The operator is still directing the robot’s actions, but in a way that doesn’t Houston and director of the International Subsea Engi- require steering the robot by hand, or a b­ andwidth-intensive neering Research Institute. “The uncertainty is there,” he live video feed. says. “I’m worried about a malfunction during an opera- HMI’s long-term plan is to sell Aquanaut interventions as a tion, which could have both financial and environmen- service. Using small fleets of robots distributed across areas tal consequences. Although the technology is exciting, like the North Sea or off the coast of California, oil and gas they’re going to need to prove that it’ll work.” companies would simply need to request that a given task be completed, and HMI would then schedule the nearest After three exhausting days testing Aquanaut at the NBL, robot to take care of it. Radford says it takes about seven the team celebrates with a crawfish boil in the parking lot people to operate a single traditional ROV. “We think we behind the HMI office, accompanied by improbable cans can invert that,” he says. “We think one operator could run of Robot Fish IPA, which came all the way from a brewery seven Aquanauts.” in Brooklyn, N.Y. Stories about robotics at NASA flow as With a low-bandwidth connection and an operator only quickly as the beer, while I learn how to play cornhole and intermittently in the loop, there may be a greater risk of suck the juice out of crawfish heads. something going wrong, says Matthew A. Franchek, a A sense of relief that the testing went well transitions professor of mechanical engineering at the University of easily into excitement about the future. Radford explains

28 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG GONE SWIMMING: To test Aquanaut under controlled conditions, Houston Mechatronics brought the robot to one of the biggest indoor pools in the world. NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, where astronauts train for zero-gravity environments, is large enough to contain full-scale mock-ups of the main modules of the International Space Station [seen in the background].

that the current version of Aquanaut is primarily a dem- manipulate objects on the sea floor.” DARPA’s illustration onstration and testing platform, designed for relatively accompanying the announcement features a streamlined shallow water with a maximum operational depth of robotic submarine with two arms, a concept that bodes 300 meters. While this version could perform commer- well for a certain Houston company. cial operations in many parts of the world, HMI is already The party continues outside, but folks are already in the process of designing a scaled-up version that will starting to trickle back to their desks, intent on getting be able to travel several hundred kilometers and reach Aquanaut ready for its next NBL test. Its first open-water depths of 3,000 meters, necessary for servicing areas demonstration will likely take place at a naval technol- like the Gulf of Mexico. ogy exercise in Rhode Island in August. For a robot that And of course, commercial operations aren’t the only was in pieces in March, it’s an aggressive timeline, but things that HMI is exploring for Aquanaut. Radford couldn’t Radford is confident that his team can handle it. talk to me on the record about any potential work with the “It’s fun to come to work on something that’s audacious,” U.S. Department of Defense, but in late 2018 the Defense he says. “We think there’s a better, more cost-effective way Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a program to do work underwater. And we’re going to prove it.” n called Angler seeking proposals to “develop an undersea autonomous system that can navigate to and physically ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotsub0819

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 29 The Last Silicon Transistor

30 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG BY PEIDE YE, THOMAS ERNST & MUKESH V. KHARE

Nanosheet devices could be the final evolutionary step for Moore’s Law

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 31 THE SHAPE Nanosheet field-effect transistors flow current through multiple stacks of silicon that are completely surrounded by the transistor OF THINGS gate. The design reduces avenues for current to leak through and boosts the amount of current the device can drive. TO COME

The modern micro- Right now, 7 nm is the cutting edge, but Samsung and processor is among TSMC announced in April that they were beginning the the world’s most com- move to the next node, 5 nm. Samsung had some addi- plex systems, but at its tional news: It has decided that the kind of transistor the heart is a very simple, industry had been using for nearly a decade has run its and we think beautiful, course. For the following node, 3 nm, which should begin device: the tr­ ansistor. limited manufacture around 2020, it is working on a com- There are billions of pletely new design. them in a microproces- That transistor design goes by a variety of names—gate-all- sor today, and they are around, multibridge channel, nanobeam—but in research nearly all identical. So circles we’ve been calling it the nanosheet. The name isn’t improving the performance and boosting the den- very important. What is important is that this design isn’t sity of these transistors is the most straightforward just the next transistor for logic chips; it might be the last. way to make microprocessors—and the computers There will surely be variations on the theme, but from here they power—work better. on, it’s probably all about nanosheets. That’s the premise behind Moore’s Law, even now that it’s (almost) at an end. You see, making smaller, ALTHOUGH THE SHAPE and the materials have changed, better transistors for microprocessors is getting more the metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor, or and more difficult, not to mention fantastically expen- MOSFET—the kind of transistor used in microprocessors— sive. Only Intel, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor has included the same basic structures since its invention Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) are equipped to operate at in 1959: the gate stack, the channel region, the source elec- this frontier of miniaturization. They are all manufac- trode, and the drain electrode. In the device’s original form, turing integrated circuits at the equivalent of what is the source, drain, and channel are basically regions of sili- called the 7-nanometer node. That name, a vestige of con that are doped with atoms of other elements to pro- the early days of Moore’s Law, doesn’t have a clear physi­ duce either a region with an abundance of mobile negative cal meaning anymore, but it nevertheless reflects the charge (n-type) or one with an abundance of mobile positive degree to which features and devices on an integrated charges (p-type). You need both types of transistors for the

circuit are miniaturized. CMOS technology that makes up today’s computer chips. IBM

32 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG The MOSFET’s gate stack is situated STACKED NANOSHEETS con between the source and the drain, just above the channel region. Today CAN BE MADE WIDE TO providing a wider path for current to the gate stack is made of metal (for the BOOST CURRENT OR flow through. The gate and dielectric gate electrode) atop a layer of dielectric NARROW TO LIMIT POWER are then draped over the fin, surround‑ material. The combination is designed CONSUMPTION. ing it on three sides instead of just one. to project an electric field into the tran‑ The FinFET has no doubt been a sistor channel region while preventing great success. Though it was invented charge from leaking through. more than a decade earlier, the FinFET Applying a large enough voltage to the gate (relative to was first commercially introduced in 2011 at the 22-nm node the source) creates a layer of mobile charge carriers near by Intel and later by Samsung, TSMC, and others. Since the interface between the dielectric and the silicon. Once then it’s been the workhorse of cutting-edge silicon logic this layer completely bridges the span from source to drain, in these final stages of Moore’s Law scaling. But all good current can flow across. Reducing gate voltage to near zero things come to an end. should squeeze that conductive pathway shut. Of course, for current to flow through the channel from WITH THE 3-NM NODE, FinFETs are not up to the task. the source to the drain, you first need a voltage across it. As The three of us saw this coming in one form or another transistor structures were made smaller and smaller, the more than a decade ago, as did others. effects of this voltage ultimately led to the biggest shape‑shift Excellent as it is, the FinFET has its problems. For one, it in transistor history. introduced a design limitation that wasn’t a factor for the That’s because the source-drain voltage can create its own old “planar” transistor. To see the problem, you have to conductive region between the electrodes. As the channel understand that there’s always a trade-off among a tran‑ region became shorter and shorter with each new transis‑ sistor’s speed, power consumption, manufacturing com‑ tor generation, the influence of the drain voltage got bigger. plexity, and cost. And that trade-off has a lot ot do with the

Charge would leak across, ducking beneath the region near width of the channel, which is called Weff in device-design the gate. The result was a transistor that was never com‑ circles. More width means you can drive more current and pletely off, wasting power and generating heat. switch a transistor on and off faster. But it also requires a To stanch the unwanted flow of charge, the channel more complicated, costly manufacturing process. region had to be made thinner, restricting the path for In a planar device, you can make this trade-offsimply by charge to sneak through. And the gate needed to surround adjusting the geometry of the channel. But fins don’t allow the channel on more sides. Thus, today’s transistor, the as much flexibility. The metal interconnects that link tran‑ FinFET, was born. It’s a design in which the channel region sistors to form circuits are built in layers above the transis‑ is essentially tilted up on its side to form a slim fin of sili‑ tors themselves. Because of this, the transistor fins can’t

The gate controls the flow of current through the channel region. Drain

Dielectric Source

Charge can leak through Planar FET FinFET Stacked nanosheet FET the channel region Up until about 2011, planar Surrounding the channel region on The gate completely surrounds the and waste power. transistors were the best three sides with the gate gives better channel regions to give even better devices available. control and prevents current leakage. control than the FinFET.

EVOLUTION Since its introduction in 1959, the field-effect transistor has been mostly built into the plane of the silicon. But in order OF THE FET to better control the leakage of current, it took the shape of a protruding fin and will now become stacked sheets.

ILLUSTRATION BY Emily Cooper SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 33 really vary very much in height—equivalent to width in slowing the transistor’s switching speed. Finally, due to planar designs—without interfering with the interconnect the complexity of making very narrow nanowires, they layers. Today, chip designers get around this problem by often wind up being rough around the edges. This sur- making individual transistors that have multiple fins. face roughness can impede the speed of charge carriers. Another of the FinFET’s shortcomings is that its gate sur- In 2006, engineers working with one of us (Ernst) at rounds the rectangular silicon fin on only three sides, leav- CEA‑Leti, in France, demonstrated a better idea. Instead of ing the bottom side connected to the body of the silicon. using a stack of nanowires to bridge the source and drain, This allows some leakage current to flow when the transis- they used a stack of thin sheets of silicon. The idea was to tor is off. Many researchers reasoned that to gain ultimate increase the width of the channel in a smaller transistor, while control over the channel region, the gate needed to sur- maintaining tight control over leakage current—and thus pro- round it completely. vide a better performing, lower-power device. And it works: Researchers have been taking this idea to its logical con- Under the direction of another of us (Khare), IBM Research clusion since at least 1990. That year, researchers reported took the concept further in 2017, showing that a transistor

the first silicon device with a gate that completely surrounds made from stacked nanosheets actually offered more effW the channel region. Since then, a generation of researchers than a FinFET that takes up the same amount of chip area. have worked on so-called gate-all-around devices. By 2003, But the nanosheet design offers one more bonus: researchers seeking to minimize leakage turned the chan- It restores the flexibility lost in the transition to FinFETs. nel region into a narrow nanowire that bridges the source Sheets can be made wide to boost current or narrow to and the drain and is surrounded by the gate on all sides. limit power consumption. IBM Research has made them in So why don’t gate-all-around nanowires provide the stacks of three with sizes ranging from 8 to 50 nm across. basis for the newest transistor? Again, it’s all about chan- nel width. A narrow wire provides little opportunity for HOW DO YOU MAKE a nanosheet transistor? It might electrons to escape, thus keeping the transistor off when seem like a tall order, considering that most semiconduc- it should be off. But it also provides little room for elec- tor manufacturing processes cut straight down from the trons to flow when the transistor is on, limiting current top of the silicon or fill straight up from the exposed surface. and slowing switching. Nanosheets need to remove material between layers of other

You can get more Weff, and therefore current, by stack- material and fill in the gaps with both metal and dielectric. ing nanowires atop one another. And Samsung engineers The main trick is in building what’s called a superlattice— unveiled a version of this configuration in 2004, called the a periodic, layered crystal of two materials. In this case it’s multibridge channel FET. But it had several limitations. For silicon and silicon germanium. Researchers have made super- one, like the FinFET’s fin, the stack can’t get too high or lattices with 19 layers, but the mechanical stresses involved, it will interfere with the interconnect layer. For another, as well as the capacitances, make using that many layers ill each additional nanowire adds to the device’s capacitance, advised. After the appropriate number of layers are grown,

Silicon Silicon Gate Metal gate dielectric Silicon germanium

A superlattice of silicon A chemical that etches Atomic layer deposition builds Atomic layer deposition and silicon germanium away silicon germanium a thin layer of dielectric on the builds the metal gate so are grown atop the silicon reveals the silicon channel silicon channels, including on that it completely surrounds substrate. regions. the underside. the channel regions.

HOW TO MAKE Sacrificial layers, selective chemical etchants, and advanced atomically precise deposition technology are NANOSHEETS needed to make nanosheets.

34 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Emily Cooper we use a chemical that selectively etches silicon germanium but does nothing to silicon, leaving only the silicon nanosheets suspended as bridges between the source and drain. It’s actually not a new idea; engineers at France Telecom and STMicroelectronics used it 20 years ago in experimental “silicon-on-nothing” transistors, devices that tried to limit short-channel effects by burying a layer of air beneath the transistor channel region. Once you’ve got the silicon nanosheet channel regions constructed, it’s a matter of filling in the gaps, surround- ing the channels first with dielectric and then with metal to form the gate stack. Both these steps are done with a process called atomic layer deposition, introduced in semi- conductor manufacturing only a little over a decade ago. In this process, a gaseous chemical adsorbs to the chip’s Stacked nanosheets also show great A NANOSHEET promise for compound semiconductors, exposed surfaces, even the underside of the nanosheet, FOREST such as indium gallium arsenide [above], to form a single layer. A second chemical is then added, and for silicon alternatives like germanium. reacting with the first to leave an atomic-scale layer of the needed material, such as the dielectric hafnium-dioxide. The process is so precise that the thickness of the depos- than expected. That nanosheet transistor allowed currents ited material is controllable down to a single atomic layer. of 9,000 microamper­ es for each micrometer of channel width. That’s about three times better than the best planar One of the astounding things InGaAs MOSFET­ s today. The device performance is still about the nanosheet design far from the limit of what such transistors could deliver is that it may extend Moore’s if the manufacturing process were further improved. It’s Law so far that it actually out- possible that we can boost the performance by a factor of lasts the use of silicon in the 10 or more by stacking more nanosheets. (Researchers at channel. To a large degree, HRL Laboratories, in Malibu, Calif., are now working on what’s at issue here is heat. stacks of tens of nanosheets to develop gallium nitride Transistor density is still power devices.) That’s why we believe this strategy is so increasing with every tech- important to the future of high-speed and energy-efficient nology node. But the amount integrated circuits. of heat an IC can reasonably remove—the power density— And InGaAs is not the only option for future nanosheet has been stuck at about 100 watts per square centimeter for transistors. Researchers are also exploring other semi- a decade. Chipmakers have gone to great lengths to keep conductors with high-mobility charge carriers, such as from surpassing this fundamental limit. To keep the heat germanium, indium arsenide, and gallium antimonide. down, clock rates don’t exceed 4 gigahertz. And the proces- For example, researchers at the National University of sor industry moved to multicore designs, correctly reasoning Singapore ­recently constructed a full CMOS IC using a that several slower processor cores could do the same job as combination of n-type transistors made of indium arsenide a single fast one while generating less heat. If we ever want and p-type transistors made of gallium antimonide. But a to be able to ramp up clock speeds again, we’ll need more potentially simpler solution is to use doped germanium, energy-efficient transistors than silicon by itself can deliver. because the speeds of electrons and positive charge carri- One potential solution is to introduce new materials into ers (holes) traveling through it are both very fast. Germa- the channel region, such as germanium or semiconductors nium still has some manufacturing-process and reliability composed of elements from columns III and V of the peri- issues, however. So industry might first take things halfway, odic table, such as gallium arsenide. Electrons can move using silicon germanium as the channel material. more than 10 times as fast in some of these semiconduc- All in all, stacking nanosheets appears to be the best tors, allowing transistors made from these materials to way possible to construct future transistors. Chipmakers switch faster. More important, because the electrons move are already confident enough in the technology to put it faster, you can operate the device at a lower voltage, which on their road maps for the very near future. And with the leads to higher energy efficiency and less heat generation. integration of high-mobility semiconductor materials, In 2012, inspired by earlier work on nanowire transis- nanosheet transistors could well carry us as far into the tors and superlattice structures, one of us (Ye) constructed future as anyone can now foresee. n some three-nanosheet devices using indium gallium

PURDUE UNIVERSITY PURDUE ­arsenide, a III-V semiconductor. The results were better ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanosheet0819

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 35 The Quiet A half century ago, better By Remaking of transistors and switching regulators Ken Computer Power revolutionized the design of Shirriff Supplies computer power supplies INTEL NOT INSIDE: X-rays reveal the component parts of a switching power supply used in the original Apple II microcomputer, released in 1977.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 37 Computer power supplies don’t get much respect.

As a tech enthusiast, you probably know what microproces- of our cars. They power clocks, radios, home audio amplifi- sor is in your computer and how much physical memory it ers, and other small appliances. The engineers who actually has, but odds are you know nothing about the power supply. did foment this revolution deserve to be recognized. And it’s Don’t feel bad—even for manufacturers, designing the power a pretty good story, too. supply is an afterthought. That’s a shame, because it took considerable effort to cre- The power supply in a desktop computer like ate the power supplies found in personal computers, which the Apple II converts alternating-current line represent a huge improvement from the circuits that powered T voltage into direct current, providing highly other kinds of consumer electronics up until about the late stable voltages to power the system. Power 1970s. This breakthrough resulted from huge strides made supplies can be built in a variety of ways, but in semiconductor technology a half century ago, specifically linear and switching designs are the two most common. improvements in switching transistors and innovations in ICs. A typical linear power supply uses a bulky transformer to And yet, it’s a revolution that goes completely unrecognized convert the relatively high-voltage AC from the power lines by the general public and even by many people familiar with into low-voltage AC, which is then converted to low-voltage the history of microcomputers. DC using diodes, usually four of them wired in the classic Power supplies are not without ardent champions, however, bridge configuration. Large electrolytic capacitors are used including one that might surprise you: Steve Jobs. According to smooth the output of the diode bridge. Computer power to his authorized biographer, Walter Isaacson, Jobs had strong supplies use a circuit called a linear regulator, which reduces feelings about the power supply of the pioneering Apple II DC voltage to the desired level and keeps it fixed there even personal computer and its designer, Rod Holt. Jobs’s claim, as the load varies as reported by Isaacson, goes like this: Linear power supplies are almost trivial to design and build. And they use inexpensive low-voltage semiconductors. But they Instead of a conventional linear power supply, Holt have two major drawbacks. One is the large capacitors and the built one like those used in oscilloscopes. It switched hefty transformer needed, which could never be packaged into the power on and off not sixty times per second, but anything as small, light, and convenient as the chargers we all thousands of times; this allowed it to store the power now use with our smartphones and tablets. The other is the lin- for far less time, and thus throw off less heat. “That ear regulator, a transistor-based circuit, which turns the excess switching power supply was as revolutionary as the DC voltage—anything above the designated output ­voltage— Apple II logic board was,” Jobs later said. “Rod doesn’t get into waste heat. So such power supplies typically squander a lot of credit for this in the history books, but he should. more than half of the power they consume. And they often Every computer now uses switching power supplies, and require large metal heat sinks or fans to get rid of all that heat. they all rip off Rod Holt’s design.” A switching power supply works on a different principle: In a typical switching power supply, the AC line input is con- Jobs’s claim is a big one, and it didn’t sit right with me, so I verted to high-voltage DC, which is switched on and off tens of did some investigating. I discovered that, although switching thousands of times a second. The high frequencies employed power supplies were revolutionary, the revolution took place allow the use of much smaller and lighter-weight transform- between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s as switching power ers and smaller capacitors. A special circuit precisely times supplies took over from simple but inefficient linear power the switching to control the output voltage. Because they supplies. The Apple II, introduced in 1977, benefitted from don’t need linear regulators, such supplies waste little energy: this revolution but didn’t instigate it. They’re typically 80 to 90 percent efficient and therefore give This correction to Jobs’s version of events is much more off much less heat. than a bit of engineering trivia. Today, switching power sup- A switching power supply is, however, considerably more plies are a ubiquitous mainstay, which we use daily to charge complex than a linear power supply, and thus it is harder to our smartphones, tablets, laptops, cameras, and even some design. In addition, it is much more demanding on the com-

38 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG iPod charger

iPhone charger

ponents, requiring high-voltage power transistors that can Warts and All efficiently switch on and off at high speed. IN THE PAST, small electronic devices typically used bulky wall As a side note, I should mention that some computers have transformers, disparagingly called “wall warts.” Around the turn used power supplies that are neither linear nor switching. One of the 21st century, technology improvements made compact, crude but effective technique was to run a motor off of line low-power switching supplies practical for small devices. As power and use that motor to drive a generator that creates the the price of switching AC/DC adapters dropped, they rapidly desired output voltage. Motor-generator units were used for replaced bulky wall transformers for most household devices. decades, at least as far back as the IBM punch-card machines Apple made the charger into a highly designed object, of the 1930s and continuing through the 1970s for such things introducing a sleek iPod charger in 2001 with a compact as Cray supercomputers. IC-controlled flyback power supply inside [left]. USB chargers Another option, popular from the 1950s through the 1980s, soon became ubiquitous, with Apple’s ultracompact inch-cube was to use ferroresonant transformers, a special type of trans- charger (introduced in 2008) becoming iconic [right]. former that provides a constant voltage output. Also, the The latest trend in high-end chargers of this type is to use saturable reactor, a controllable inductor, was used for power- gallium-nitride (GaN) semiconductors, which are able to supply regulation for vacuum-tube computers in the 1950s. It switch faster than silicon transistors and thus be more efficient. reappeared as the “mag amp” in some modern PC power sup- Pushing technology in the other direction, the cheapest USB plies, providing additional regulation. But in the end, these chargers are now sold for under a dollar, although at the cost of odd approaches largely gave way to switching power supplies. bad power quality and missing safety features. —K.S.

PREVIOUS PAGES AND ABOVE, PHOTOGRAPHY BY David Arky SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 39 The principles behind the switching power typewriter‑like Selectric Composer, and the IBM 5100 porta- supply have been known to electrical engi- ble computer. By 1976, Data General was using switching sup- T neers since the 1930s, but this technique plies in half of its systems, and HP was using them for smaller found limited use in the vacuum-tube era. systems such as the 9825A Desktop Computer and the 9815A Special mercury-containing tubes called Calculator. Switching power supplies were also showing up in ­thyratrons were used in some power supplies of the time that the home, powering some color television sets by 1973. could be considered primitive, low-frequency switching regu­ Switching power supplies were widely featured in electron- lators. Examples include the REC-30 Teletype power supply ics magazines of this era, both in advertisements and articles. from the 1940s and the supply used in the IBM 704 computer As far back as 1964, Electronic Design recommended switching from 1954. With the introduction of power transistors in the power supplies for better efficiency. The October 1971 cover of 1950s, though, switching power supplies rapidly improved. Electronics World featured a 500-watt switching power supply Pioneer Magnetics started building switching power supplies and an article titled, “The Switching Regulator Power Supply.” in 1958. And General Electric published an early design for a Computer Design in 1972 discussed switching power supplies in transistorized switching power supply in 1959. detail and the increasing prevalence of such supplies in com- Through the 1960s, NASA and the puters, although it mentioned that some aerospace industry provided the main companies were still skeptical. In 1976, driving force behind the development a cover of Electronic Design announced, of switching power supplies, because “Suddenly it’s easier to switch” describing for aerospace applications, the advan- the new switching power-supply control- tages of small size and high efficiency ler ICs. Electronics ran a long article on the trumped the high cost. For example, in subject; Powertec ran two-page ads on the 1962 the Telstar satellite (the first satellite advantages of its switching power supplies to transmit television pictures) and the with the catchphrase, “The big switch is to ­Minuteman missile both used switching switchers”; and Byte announced switch- power supplies. As the decade wore on, ing power supplies for microcomputers costs came down, and switching supplies from a company called Boschert. were designed into things sold to the pub- Robert Boschert, who quit his job and lic. In 1966, for example, T­ ektronix used started building power supplies on his a switching power supply in a portable kitchen table in 1970, was a key devel- oscilloscope, allowing it to run off mains oper of this technology. He focused on current or batteries. simplifying these designs to make them That trend accelerated as power- cost competitive with linear power sup- supply manufacturers started selling plies, and by 1974 he was producing in vol-

switching units to other companies. In LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS: Steve Jobs ume a low-cost power supply for printers, 1967, RO Associates introduced the first shows off an Apple II personal computer which was followed by a low-cost 80-W 20-kilohertz switching power supply prod- in 1981. First introduced in 1977, the switching power supply in 1976. By 1977, Apple II benefitted from the industry-wide uct, which it claimed was the first commer- shift from bulky linear power supplies to Boschert Inc. had grown to a 650-person cially successful example of a switching small, efficient switching designs. But the company. It made power supplies for satel- power supply. Nippon Electronic Memory Apple II didn’t instigate this transition, as lites and the Grumman F-14 fighter aircraft, Jobs later claimed. Industry Co. started developing standard- later producing computer power supplies ized switching power supplies in Japan in for companies such as HP and Sun. 1970. By 1972, most power-supply manufacturers were selling The introduction of high-voltage, high-speed transistors at switching supplies or were about to offer them. low cost in the late 1960s and early 1970s, by companies such as It was about this time that the computer industry started Solid State Products Inc. (SSPI), Siemens Edison Swan (SES), and using switching power supplies. Early examples include Motorola, among others, helped push switching power supplies Digital Equipment’s PDP-11/20 minicomputer in 1969 and into the mainstream. Faster transistor switching speeds boost Hewlett-Packard’s 2100A minicomputer in 1971. A 1971 indus- efficiency because heat is dissipated in such a transistor mostly try publication stated that companies using switching regu- while it is switching between on and off states, and the faster the lators “read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the computer industry: device could make that transition, the less energy it would waste. IBM, Honeywell, Univac, DEC, Burroughs, and RCA, to name Transistor speeds were increasing by leaps and bounds at a few.” In 1974, minicomputers using switching power sup- the time. Indeed, transistor technology was moving so fast plies included Data General’s Nova 2/4, Texas Instruments’ that the editors of Electronics World claimed in 1971 that the 960B, and systems from Interdata. In 1975, switching power 500-W power supply featured on its cover couldn’t have been

supplies were used in the HP2640A display terminal, IBM’s built with the transistors available just 18 months earlier. IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY PICTURE LIFE THAI/THE TED

40 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG Another notable advance came in 1976, when Robert cards found in many computers also contain VRMs to power Mammano, a cofounder of Silicon General Semiconductors, the high-performance graphics chips they contain. introduced the first IC to control a switching power supply, A fast processor these days might require as much as 130 W designed for an electronic Teletype machine. His SG1524 con- from a VRM—vastly more than the mere half a watt of power troller IC drastically simplified the design of these supplies and used by the Apple II’s 6502 processor. Indeed, a modern pro- lowered costs, triggering a surge in sales. cessor chip alone can use more than three times the power By 1974, give or take a year or two, it was clear to anyone consumed by the entire Apple II computer. with even a smattering of knowledge of the electronics industry The growing power consumption of computers has become that a real revolution in power-supply design was taking place. a cause for environmental concern, resulting in initiatives and regulations to make power supplies more efficient. In the United The Apple II personal computer was intro- States, the government’s Energy Star and the ­industry‑led duced in 1977. One of its features was a com- 80 Plus certifications pushed manufacturers to produce more T pact, fanless switching power supply, which “green” power supplies. They’ve been able to do so using a provided 38 W of power at 5, 12, –5, and variety of techniques: more efficient standby power, more –12 volts. It used Holt’s simple design, a kind of efficient startup circuits, resonant circuits that reduce power switching power supply known as an off-line flyback converter losses in the switching transistors, and “active clamp” circuits topology. Jobs claimed that every computer now rips off Holt’s that replace switching diodes with more efficient transistor- revolutionary design. But was this design truly revolutionary ized circuits. Improvements in power MOSFET transistor and in 1977? And was it copied by every other computer maker? high-voltage silicon rectifier technology in the past decade No, and no. Similar off-line flyback converters were being sold have also led to efficiency improvements. at the time by Boschert and other companies. Holt obtained a The technology of switching power supplies continues to patent on a couple of specific features of his supply, but those advance in other ways, too. Today, instead of using analog features never became widely used. And building the con- circuits, many power supplies use digital chips and software trol circuitry out of discrete components, as was done for the algorithms to control their outputs. Designing a power-supply Apple II, proved a technological dead end. The future of switch- controller has becomes as much a matter of programming as ing power supplies belonged to special-purpose controller ICs. of hardware design. Digital power management lets power If there’s one microcomputer that did have a lasting impact supplies communicate with the rest of the system for higher on power-supply designs, it was the IBM Personal Computer, efficiency and logging. While these digital technologies are launched in 1981. By then, just four years after the Apple II, largely reserved for servers now, they are starting to influence power-supply technology had greatly changed. While both the design of desktop computers. of these early personal computers used off-line flyback power supplies with multiple outputs, that’s about all they had in It’s hard to square this history with Jobs’s common. Their drive, control, feedback, and regulation cir- assertion that Holt should be better known cuits were all different. Even though the IBM PC power sup- I or that “Rod doesn’t get a lot of credit for this ply used an IC controller, it contained approximately twice as in the history books, but he should.” Even many components as the Apple II power supply. These extra the very best power-supply designers don’t components provided additional regulation on the outputs become known outside of a tiny community. In 2009, the and a “power good” signal when all four voltages were correct. editors of Electronic Design welcomed Boschert into their In 1984, IBM released a significantly upgraded version of Engineering Hall of Fame. Robert Mammano received a life- its personal computer, called the IBM Personal Computer time achievement award in 2005 from the editors of Power AT. Its power supply used a variety of new circuit designs, Electronics Technology. Rudy Severns received another such entirely abandoning the earlier flyback topology. It swiftly lifetime achievement award in 2008 for his innovations in became the de facto standard and remained so until 1995, switching power supplies. But none of these luminaries in when Intel introduced the ATX form-factor specification, power-supply design are even Wikipedia-famous. which among other things defined the ATX power supply, Jobs’s much-repeated assertion that Holt has been over- still standard today. looked led to Holt’s work being described in dozens of popular Despite the advent of the ATX standard, computer power articles and books about Apple, from Paul Ciotti’s “Revenge systems became more complicated in 1995 with the introduc- of the Nerds,” which appeared in California magazine in 1982 tion of the Pentium Pro, a microprocessor that required lower to Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Jobs in 2011. So ironi- voltage at higher current than an ATX power supply could pro- cally enough, even though his work on the Apple II was by no vide directly. To supply this power, Intel introduced the volt- means revolutionary, Rod Holt has probably become the most age regulator module (VRM)—a DC-to-DC switching regulator famous power-supply designer ever. n installed next to the processor. It reduced the 5 V from the

power supply to the 3 V used by the processor. The graphics ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/powersupplies0819

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 41 42 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG HAPPINESS IS A HYBRID-ELECTRIC FERRY A Cleaner, Quieter Ride Happiness, a diesel- powered ferry in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, has been retrofitted with a hybrid-electric A diesel-burning boat finds new life microgrid. The new propulsion system with a direct-current microgrid [shown in blue] BY CHUN-LIEN SU, operates on direct current, which offers JOSEP M. GUERRERO better power quality, & SHENG-HUA CHEN improved control, and greater efficiency.

ILLUSTRATION BY James Provost SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 43 While electrifying a large cargo ship or cruise ship is still impractical given the current state of batteries and electric mo- tors, smaller ferries operating on shorter routes are ideal for electrification. The main difference between Happiness and most of the other elec- trified ferries is the direct-current micro­ grid as its heart. Compared with more conventional shipboard systems that use alternating current exclusively, the Taiwanese boat’s DC microgrid offers lower power consumption, lower emis- sions, better reliability, and more seam- less integration with other equipment like batteries and generators. Our expe- rience with Happiness highlights why it makes sense for the designers of future short-range electric ships to incorporate a DC microgrid into their plans.

USING DIRECT-CURRENT U electricity on ships isn’t a new idea. Way back in 1880, Thomas Edison used one of his electric dynamos, which generated On a cool, overcast morning in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, a chunky and direct current, to power the lighting on colorfully painted ferry waits at a dock as a stream of passengers the steamship SS Columbia. But just as clambers aboard. It’s Chinese New Year 2017, and white-gloved offi- land-based DC electrical systems gave way cials are standing at the rails, beaming and waving. The boat, called to those based on alternating current, ship- Happiness, isn’t a new boat. Indeed, the years of wear and tear are board DC systems failed to take off for quite obvious. But as a blue banner across the boat’s side proclaims, much of the 20th century. It’s only recently Happiness has been retrofitted with a direct-current hybrid-electric that maritime power engineers have taken microgrid, and this is the reborn ship’s inaugural voyage. Most of the a renewed interest in direct current, to passengers have no idea what makes this boat so special, but all of exploit DC’s advantages over AC. them can appreciate the absence of diesel fumes, the whisper-quiet One big problem with AC power on propulsion, and the lack of jarring vibrations from the deck. ships is maintaining the power q­ uality. Happiness now shuttles about 4,500 passengers a day—1.7 m­ illion With AC, the current and voltage are per year—on a short hop across Kaohsiung Harbor. The plucky little slightly out of phase, but when the two ferry doesn’t look like a trendsetter, but it is. Since its introduction, become too far out of phase, it can cause dozens of other hybrid-electric and fully electric ferries have been the voltage to sag or spike, which can de- unveiled around the world, and the number is growing year by year. grade the equipment over time and also According to the market research firm IDTechEx, the market for elec- cause the network to shut down if it goes tric and hybrid boats will expand to US $12 billion by 2029. Car and too far. Because a shipboard electrical passenger ferries represent more than half of that market, according system is extremely small, compared to the ­quality-assurance and risk-management company DNV GL. with, say, a citywide grid, it can suffer Such upward trends show that the shipping industry is finally get- from instabilities such as harmonic dis- ting serious about finding alternatives to its highly polluting, fossil- tortions, in which undesirable higher fueled vessels. frequencies develop beyond the funda- mental frequency—which in Taiwan’s

case is 60 hertz. With DC, there are no SOIC AND CO. SHIPPING CITY KAOHSIUNG PHOTOS: ALL

44 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG A CLEANER HARBOR: Happiness operates on a 650-meter hop to and from Cijin Island, a popular tourist destination. The introduction of hybrid-electric ferries has greatly reduced pollution in Kaohsiung Harbor. The engineering group responsible for retrofitting Happiness is now working on hybrid-electric yachts, tugboats, and tenders.

• Taipei

Gushan Ferry Pier TAIWAN

Kaohsiung Harbor

Kaohsiung Cijin Island City

waveforms to fall out of sync with each of many types of electrical components Happiness originally entered service in other, so the power quality is higher. and equipment, such as lights and air con- 2009, operating on the short 650-meter With a DC system, you don’t need a ditioning, are still not widely available. hop between the Gushan Ferry Pier and transformer to step voltages up and For all these reasons, we decided to Cijin Island, a popular tourist destination down, nor do you need rectifiers or in- create a hybrid-electric AC/DC ferry. The in Kaohsiung City. The ferry was equipped verters to convert between DC and AC. main propulsion system and batteries with two diesel engines, each with a rated Instead, you can use solid-state power would operate on DC, while loads such as power of 225 kilowatts, to drive the main converters, which are much more com- lighting, air conditioning, and deck ma- shaft of the propeller. There were also pact and efficient and give you better chinery would operate on AC. The entire two 88-kW diesel generators to power control over the voltage and current. system would form a microgrid, with pow- the engine room pumps, air condition- So if you’re operating equipment with er generation, distribution, storage, and ing, lighting, and deck machinery. variable-­frequency drives, such as an loads comprising a self-contained network. The diesel engines were seriously over- electric motor driver, a power converter Rather than designing a new vessel sized for the type of duty they were per- improves the control of the motor. from scratch for this experiment, we forming. Although its theoretical top Best of all, a DC power system works opted to retrofit an existing diesel boat. speed was 10 knots, or 18.5 kilometers very well with power sources like fuel cells, This decision was driven mainly by cost per hour, the ferry rarely moved that lithium-ion batteries, and supercapacitors, considerations: Because our focus was fast. On its short route, the vessel left the all of which are DC devices. So integrating on the electrical and propulsion systems, dock, briefly reached about 5 knots, and them into a DC rather than an AC system we figured that starting with a boat that then decelerated before arriving at the saves on energy that would otherwise be was already proven to be seaworthy was opposite dock. It spent about two-thirds lost in converting DC to AC and back again. the more practical and economical op- of its time idling at Gushan or Cijin, as But to operate a ferry entirely on DC tion. The cost of retrofittingHappiness passengers got on and off. electric would require an enormous came to $400,000. By comparison, a The frequent stopping, starting, and bank of batteries, which would be costly later hybrid-­electric ferry that we built idling were causing the diesel engines to

and tricky to manage. And DC versions from scratch cost about $2 million. wear out prematurely and lose efficiency.

MAP ILLUSTRATION BY James Provost SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 45 EDISON WOULD APPROVE: The retrofitted ferry now boasts a DC propulsion system that includes two synchronous permanent-magnet motors [above left] and a 100-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery system [above middle], which is charged at night via a dockside fast-charging station [above right]. The engineering team behind Happiness also designed and built two brand-new hybrid-electric AC/DC ferries, the first of which was launched in late 2017 [below].

And local officials and businesses weren’t happy about the clouds of diesel fumes hanging over Kaohsiung Harbor, thanks to Happiness and the three other ferries that plied the waterway. As it turns out, short, frequent hops are an excellent match for electric propulsion. The project to retrofitHappiness with a hybrid AC/DC electric system began in June 2016. With funding from Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, the new system was developed by the Ship and Ocean Industries R&D Center (SOIC), in Our team started by creating two in- Editron of Denmark, each with a rated collaboration with maritime propulsion terconnecting power systems: one op- power of 130 kW. The new motors were researchers at National Kaohsiung Uni- erating on AC, the other on DC. On the integrated with the original gearbox, versity of Science and Technology and AC side, the existing diesel generators main shaft, propeller, and throttle sys- Aalborg University, in Denmark. were connected to a 440-volt AC panel. tem. We also installed lithium-i­on batter- Although the electrification project could In addition to powering the lighting, air ies from the Dutch company Super B and have been outsourced to a large electrical conditioning, the engine room pump, power converters from Danfoss. The DC systems integrator, like ABB or Siemens, and deck machinery as they had been do- and AC systems are connected by a bidi- managers at SOIC decided instead to over- ing, the generators would now feed the rectional power converter, which allows see the retrofit themselves. SOIC’s mission new DC propulsion system on occasion. power to flow between the two systems, is to support the technological develop- The AC system has a total load of 35 kW. converting AC to DC and vice versa. ment of Taiwan’s ship industry and nurture On the DC side, we replaced the The new propulsion system is more homegrown manufacturing, so it made diesel engines with two synchronous suitable for lower-speed travel. Before, sense to keep the project in Taiwan. permanent-magnet­ motors from Danfoss the engine room was a noisy, smelly

46 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG space below deck. Now, the propulsion The microgrid on Happiness operates These power semiconductor devices can room is clean and quiet, and all you hear in what’s known as islanded mode. That be configured to switch off within sever- when the motors are activated is a faint, is, the microgrid’s generation, electric al milliseconds when a fault is detected. high-frequency buzz. load, and energy storage form a self-­ However, there are still some ­challenges The battery system’s capacity is contained system that isn’t synchronized with using solid-state circuit breakers for 100 kilowatt-hours, which provides enough to the larger power grid. The only time fault protection in DC microgrids. As a power for cruising. The batteries can be the ferry is connected to the Kaohsiung relatively new technology, they’re more charged by the diesel generators, and they City power grid is when it’s plugged into expensive than more mature alternatives. can also be charged using grid power, when the dockside charging station. And the communication between com- the boat is docked for the night. The dock- Operating an islanded microgrid pos- ponents when using these devices can side 380-V charging station is similar to es some challenges in terms of balanc- be tricky to automate. For our project, a fast-charging station for an electric car. ing voltages and frequencies as well as we also had to consider the ferry opera- The batteries and propulsion motors are generation and load. The ferry’s new tors: If a solid-state circuit breaker mal- connected in parallel to power converters, power-manag­ ement system acts as the functioned, would the crew be able to which in turn connect to a 750-V DC bus. brains of the microgrid, continuously ­quickly figure out what to do? In the end, The result is a shipboard microgrid with calculating the boat’s loads and power we decided it wasn’t practical to imple- a total power of 1 megawatt. flows to determine which combination ment this cutting-edge technology. The new equipment takes up much of generators and batteries to use and to Instead we used a time-honored low- less space than what it replaced. The old keep the voltages and frequencies within tech solution: fuses. We put them be- 225-kW diesel engines were each as big acceptable ranges. tween the main DC bus and the power as a household refrigerator, w­ hereas the The power management system can also ­converter. Like any other fuses, they’re new electric motors are each the size of maintain power output in the event of a simply ­pieces of conductor that melt a host computer. The old electric con- sudden outage—when a generator or mo- when too much current passes through trol lines were bulky and complicated. tor suddenly stops working due to a short them, thereby interrupting the flow. They’ve all been replaced with a stream- circuit, for instance. The safe and uninter- lined communication system, based on rupted operation of the electrical and pro- IN ADDITION to the quiet, the controller-area network (or CAN) pulsion system is of course a fundamental I clean, smooth ride that pas- protocol used in automobiles. The con- requirement for a ship that transports pas- sengers now enjoy, Happiness trol room dashboard now sports a touch sengers. Traditional AC power systems has reduced its diesel fuel screen, which lets technicians easily view are well protected from short circuits be- consumption by more than 30 percent. the system status and troubleshoot prob- cause they typically rely on large, rotating We expect the electric propulsion motors lems by looking through historic data. generators, which can sustain a very high to last much longer than the diesel engines When the retrofittedHappiness took fault current for several hundreds of milli­ would have. The batteries will probably its inaugural voyage in January 2017, it seconds without suffering catastrophic have to be swapped out after five years, became the first hybrid-electric passen- damage. That’s enough time for a rela- but the savings in diesel fuel will more ger ferry in Asia. tively slow mechanical circuit breaker to than pay for the new batteries. activate and isolate the fault, leaving the Based on the results from Happiness, THE FERRY NOW has two rest of the power system unaffected. two other hybrid-electric AC/DC fer- T operating modes: pure-­ In a shipboard DC microgrid, a fault ries have been built and launched in electric mode and range- caused by a short circuit is handled differ- Kaohsiung Harbor. Engineers at SOIC extended hybrid mode. In ently. The high fault current will typically are also designing hybrid-electric propul- pure-electric mode, the ferry operates cause the discharging of the capacitors sion systems for other types of vessels, solely on energy from the battery pack, inside the power converters, which are including yachts, tugboats, and tenders. much like the pure-electric mode in a connected to the main DC bus. The pow- At present, the use of such “green” hybrid-electric car. When the battery er converters then shut down to protect ships around the world is just beginning, system reaches its minimum state of themselves, typically within a few tens with Norway and a few other Western charge, the ferry automatically switches of microseconds. In such a situation, European countries leading the way. We to range-extended mode, with the gen- mechanical circuit breakers can’t react believe a growing share of electric and erators driving the propulsion system quickly enough, which can lead to a sys- hybrid-electric ships will be equipped and charging the batteries. Although a tem malfunction or blackout. with DC microgrids because they offer pure-electric boat would have zero local Instead of mechanical circuit break- clear advantages in fuel efficiency and emissions, it would also require a much ers, you could use solid-state circuit stable operation. That’s the lasting les- larger battery system. The hybrid con- breakers, such as ones based on IGBTs son of Happiness. n figuration permits a considerably smaller (insulated-­gate bipolar transistors) or ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/ and less costly battery pack. integrated gate-commutated thyristors. shipmicrogrid0819

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | AUG 2019 | 47 Long-term Job Recruitment Assistant Professor, position number 84683, University of Hawai‘i at Mãnoa The Institute of Medical Robotics at Shanghai Jiao (UHM), Department of Electrical Engineering, invites applications for a full-time, Tong University (SJTU) tenure-track faculty position, pending position clearance and availability of funds. To is a newly established begin approximately August 1, 2020 or soon thereafter. multidisciplinary platform for the advancement of medical robotics and UHM, a Carnegie R1 research university, is a top-50 public university dedicated allied technologies with a clear focus on direct to providing world-class teaching, research, and service. Collaboration, funding patient benefit and social-economic values. opportunities, resources, and research exposure may be found through the This is a top-level institute directly under department’s involvement and affiliation with the $5 million NSF CyberCorps Scholarship for Service the University, working closely with other Program (SFS); the NSA/DHS National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research (CAE-R); academic schools/departments. The main the $25 million NSF Center for Science of Information (focusing on big data, information theory, and machine research directions include basic science research centres in Micro/Nano Systems, learning); and Ike Wai, a $20 million NSF EPSCOR project for bio/nano sensing. Further information is Perception and Cognition, Bioinspired and available at http://ee.hawaii.edu. Biohybrid Systems, and Smart Materials, as well as applied research centres in Surgical We are seeking candidates with a strong research record in cyber security and related areas. Ideal candidates Robotics, Rehabilitation and Assistive in the primary search area will also be able to leverage the existing areas of strength at UHM: computer Robotics, Image-guided Intervention, AI and network security, privacy, CPS/IoT security, and wireless network security. However, exceptional candidates Human-robot Interaction, Biophotonics, and in all areas are encouraged to apply. Precision Mechatronics. By leveraging the unique strength of the SJTU medical school Duties: Teach and develop courses in electrical or computer engineering, develop an extramurally funded and affiliated teaching hospitals, joint clinical research program, publish outstanding work in leading scholarly journals, supervise graduate students, and research centres with targeted disease focus provide department, college, and university service. will also be established. The Institute is now recruiting faculty staff at all levels, and review Minimum qualifications: An earned Ph.D. in Electrical or Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a of applications will begin from March 2018 closely related discipline, with a strong research track record. All-But-Dissertation cases will be considered and continue until the positions are filled. but dissertation must be filed before start of employment. For complete duties and qualifications, and Generous start-up funds and competitive application instructions, refer to salary packages will be offered, depending on the experience and qualification of the https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/hawaiiedu and search for Position 84683. successful candidates.

Continuous recruitment: Application reviews will begin on Sep. 15, 2019, and will continue until the position WE ALSO PROVIDE: is filled. The University of Hawai‘i is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution and encourages • Clearer definition of job responsibilities applications from women and minority candidates. • Implementation of the tenure and pre-tenure track system and support for career progression • Equal emphasis on coursework and research • Promotion of innovative culture that fosters talent development Assistant Professor Positions RECRUITMENT POSITIONS • Vice Deans The Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer • Distinguished Professors (Tenured Position) Engineering at the New Mexico State University • Tenured Professors invites applications for two tenure-track assistant • Tenured-Track Associate Professors professor positions in (1) Power Systems and • Tenured-Track Assistant Professors (2) Autonomous and Human-Robotic Systems. We encourage applicants with outstanding One of the most track records in all related areas of medical Please apply through https://jobs.nmsu.edu/ influential reference robotics or biomedical engineering to apply. postings/35065. Applications should be resources for engineers Minimum qualifications include an earned received by November 15, 2019. NMSU is an PhD degree and/or MD degree. The applicant Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. around the world. should have outstanding academic credentials and the ability to teach effectively at both For over 100 years, Proceedings of the IEEE undergraduate and graduate levels. has been the leading journal for engineers CONTACT US looking for in-depth tutorial, survey, and Please include in your application a cover IEEE.tv gets a review coverage of the technical letter, resume(including your full publication list with 5 of your most important publications developments that shape our world. mobile makeover highlighted), state research interests and vision, and a list of 5 references with full Bring an award- contact information. Please send your winning network application to: of technology Ms. Rui Gu programs with you. To learn more and start HR Officer, Institute of Medical Robotics, your subscription today, visit Shanghai Jiao Tong University Go mobile or get the app. ieee.org/proceedings-subscribe 800 Dongchuan RD. Minhang District, www.ieee.tv Shanghai, 200240, P.R.China Tel: +86-021-34208200 E-mail: [email protected] Website: imr.sjtu.edu.cn For more detailed information and recruitment requirements, please log on the website above! 48 | AUG 2019 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG 12-MEMB-0345e IEEEtv 2x2.25 Final.indd 1 8/22/12 10:02 PM

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POSITION OPEN Toyota Technological Institute has an opening for a tenured- or tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Advanced Science and Technology. Applications are encouraged from TENURE-TRACK AND TENURED POSITIONS all relevant areas. For more information, please refer to the ShanghaiTech University invites highly website http://www.toyota-ti.ac.jp/english/employment/ qualified candidates to fill multiple tenure- associate.html track/tenured faculty positions as its core founding team in the School of Information Science and Technology (SIST). Position: Associate professor or Lecturer (tenured- or tenure-track) We seek candidates with exceptional academic records or demonstrated strong Research field: Semiconductor materials and devices for novel opto-electronics, potentials in all cutting-edge research areas of information science and technology. energy conversion, and power management functions They must be fluent in English. English-based overseas academic training or background is highly desired. Qualifications: A Ph.D. in a relevant field. The successful candidate is expected ShanghaiTech is founded as a world-class research university for training to demonstrate potential to develop strong and outstanding programs in the future generations of scientists, entrepreneurs, and technical leaders. Boasting above research field. It is also necessary for him/her to supervise students, and to a new modern campus in Zhangjiang Hightech Park of cosmopolitan Shanghai, teach advanced and basic courses both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. ShanghaiTech shall trail-blaze a new education system in China. Besides establishing Start date: April 1, 2020 or at the candidate’s earliest convenience and maintaining a world-class research profile, faculty candidates are also expected to contribute substantially to both graduate and undergraduate educations. Documents: (1) A curriculum vitae (2) A list of research activities Academic Disciplines: (3) Copies of 5 representative papers Candidates in all areas of information science and technology shall be considered. (4) An activity summary of your research and education, Compensation and Benefits: and a future plan of your research and education Salary and startup funds are highly competitive, commensurate with experience (within three pages each) and academic accomplishment. We also offer a comprehensive benefit package to employees and eligible dependents, including on-campus housing. All regular (5) Names of two references including phone numbers ShanghaiTech faculty members will join its new tenure-track system in accordance and e-mail addresses with international practice for progress evaluation and promotion. (6) An application form (available on our website) Qualifications: Deadline: September 30, 2019 • Strong research productivity and demonstrated potentials; Inquiry: Search Committee Chair Professor Yasutake Ohishi • Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Phone: +81-52-809-1860 E-mail: [email protected] Artificial Intelligence, Financial Engineering, Signal Processing, Operation Research, Applied Math, Statistics or related field); The above documentation should be sent to: • A minimum relevant (including PhD) research experience of 4 years. Mr. Masashi Hisamoto Applications: Administration Division Submit (in English, PDF version) a cover letter, a 2-page research plan, a CV plus Toyota Technological Institute copies of 3 most significant publications, and names of three referees to: sist@ 2-12-1, Hisakata, Tempaku-ku, Nagoya, 468-8511 Japan shanghaitech.edu.cn. For more information, visit http://sist.shanghaitech.edu. cn/2017/0426/c2865a23763/page.htm Please write “Application for Semiconductor materials and devices” in red on the envelope Deadline: The positions will be open until they are filled by appropriate candidates. that you will return.

Data Warehouse Specialist (Regions Bank – Hoover, AL) Utilize minimum requirements to analyze, design, develop, test complex data transformation solutions for an Enterprise Data Warehouse system. Develop ETL programs using Informatica ETL technology. Work with data stored in DB2, SQL Server, VSAM, ISAM, Oracle and flat files. Write/ deploy stored Professor/ Associate Professor/ Assistant Professor procedures, tune SQL scripts/queries. Architect scalable School of Microelectronics Southern University of Science and performing ETL solutions. Build ETL solutions to extract and transform data from mainframe systems. Design systems that Technology (Shenzhen, China) are recoverable, auditable, parameter driven. Build processes Post Specifications that meet Data Lifecycle management standards. Work with School of Microelectronics (SME) National Exemplary School of Microelectronics, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) invites highly qualified Structured and Unstructured data. Implement ETL solutions. candidates to fill multiple tenure-track/tenured faculty positions in the areas of Processing and error handling techniques. Minimum (but not limited) Emerging Microelectronic Devices (Wide-bandgap, Nonvolatile memory, MEMS Sensor), and IC-Chip Designs (Future Computing/Communication/ Requirements: Must have a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent Biomedical SoC). in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field Junior applicants should have (i) a PhD degree in related fields; and (ii) outstanding and 5 years of experience in the job offered or 5 years in a potential in teaching and research. Candidates for senior post are expected to have data warehouse engineering position. Will accept educational demonstrated exceptional academic leadership and strong commitment to be equivalence evaluation prepared by qualified evaluation service excellent in teaching, research, and services. or in accordance with 8 CFR 214.2(h)(4)(iii)(D). Education or Applications work experience may have been obtained concurrently and Submit (in English, PDF version) a cover letter, a statement in research and teaching, a CV plus copies of 3 most significant publications, and contacts of three must include 5 years of experience in each of the following: referees to: [email protected] entitled with “Apply for Faculty Position”. Informatica PowerExchange and PowerCenter tools and Applicants are required to specify the rank of the position in their letter of architecture, Oracle databases procedures, structures and application. The positions will be open until they are filled by appropriate candidates. data manipulation; Unix or LINUX scripting and navigation; For more information, please visit http://ohr.sustc.edu.cn/sustczp/product/ data warehouse modeling concepts; ETL standards, recruit/a.do?action=toZPGWList2&entityId=T_RECRUIT_PLAN&postType=2&se lectedId=1009881. methodologies, guidelines and techniques; DBMS concepts of Salary and Fringe Benefits data structures and normalization. Must have legal authority to Salary and startup funds are highly competitive, commensurate with experience work in U.S. Any suitable combination of education, training and academic accomplishment. All regular faculty members will join the tenure- or experience is acceptable. Resume to Regions Bank, Attn: track system in accordance with international practice for progress evaluation and promotion. Applicants are encouraged to check out the details about the university Ethan Dorman, Talent Acquisition Partner, Riverchase Center, at: http://www.sustech.edu.cn. 2090 Parkway Office Circle, Hoover AL 35244.

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The polygraph machine wasn’t designed as a lie detector. Invented in the early 20th century, it was initially used A REAL-LIFE to record a patient’s vital signs—pulse, blood pressure, breathing rate, and the like—as a way of diagnosing cardiac anomalies and other ailments. But it didn’t take long for people to wonder whether those same biometric signals could LASSO OF reveal a person’s emotional state and thus any intentional deception. During and after World War I, Harvard psychologist TRUTH William Moulton Marston worked on such a lie detector. He claimed good success, but other researchers couldn’t replicate his results. The idea seems to have stuck with Marston. Later in life, he helped create Wonder Woman. The superhero’s Lasso of Truth proved far more effective at apprehending criminals and revealing their misdeeds than the

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