THE MAGAZINE OF TECHNOLOGY INSIDERS 04.09

DESERT RUNNERS LIZARDS, CRABS, AND COCKROACHES ARE SHOWING RESEARCHERS HOW TO BUILD THE ROBOTS THAT WILL SOMEDAY SCURRY ON THE SANDS OF MARS

THE 10 BEST HIGH-TECH CARS

THE UNIVERSAL CELLPHONE HANDSET, SOFTWARE DEFINED volume 46 number 4 north american 04.09

update 11 smarts are only for some bridges Despite a boost in infrastructure spending, most U.s. bridges will stay dumb. By Prachi Patel

13 automated auditors

14 silencing cellphones

15 volcanic lightning

16 consumer fuel cells

18 the big picture tv gets its turn in the spotlight.

opinion 8 spectral lines can “cap and tax” help President obama’s ambitious Us $150 billion energy plan succeed?

10 forum the truth about scuba rebreathers and the state of the art in lattice-based cryptography. Plus: Nvidia talks back.

24 technically speaking tap into the information at your fingertips. By Paul McFedries

42 departMentS 4 back story lean cover story and mean: Desert dwellers can be divas. the Ford Fusion 6 contributors features a 30 March four-cylinder 20 hands on gasoline engine of the SandbotS Profligate gasoline user, heal thyself! and also a 93- Legged robots are striding more successfully than ever with the help of step one: Build your own fuel-use kilowatt electric monitor. By David Schneider motor—powerful some fleet-footed desert natives. enough to carry By Daniel Goldman, Haldun Komsuoglu & Daniel Koditschek 21 tools & toys the car at speed solving equations has never been all by itself. easier, with one new math program 26 Shrinking poSSibilitieS and big updates to four others. Transistors will continue scaling to smaller than 20 nanometers, but it By Kenneth R. Foster COVER: BRyan ChRistiE won’t happen without extreme ultraviolet lithography. By Bill Arnold DEsign 22 media this PagE: Artist-programmer Aaron Koblin built FORD MOtOR CO. 36 the univerSal handSet a 10 000-person social network for his latest work. By Susan Karlin Riddle: How many gadgets does it take to make cellphone calls, tap the Internet, and receive broadcast television? Answer: Soon, only one. 23 careers By Peter Koch & Ramjee Prasad How tightly do the ties that bind— noncompete clauses—bind? By Willie D. Jones 42 top ten tech carS 64 the data After years of talk, the auto industry is finally building electric cray X-MP versus sony Playstation 3: (or partially electric) cars. By John Voelcker And the winner is.... By Paul Wallich www.SpectruM.ieee.org APril 2009 • ieee sPectrUM • NA 1 volume 46 number 4 north american 04.09

www.ieee.org/ tHeiNstitUte available 6 april on the inStitute online whY job hunterS Should volunteer if you’re unemployed, the best thing you can do is volunteer for an organization like ieee—not just because you’ll pick up new skills but also because it’s the best way to network. you’ll make contacts and meet leaders in your field, any one of whom may lead you to a job offer.

PhOtOs: LEFt, FEstO; Right, tOM MERtOn/ gEtty iMagEs www.sPectrUM.ieee.org available 1 april on SpectruM online robotS gone wild Mechatronic jellyfish, sensor-laden seals, and lobster look-alikes are just a few of the robots whose main design techniques derive from the animal kingdom. These artificial jellyfish [above] are blooming in the labs of engineers at Festo, a German automation company. Inside each AquaJelly’s umbrella-shaped top are 11 LEDs that pulse infrared signals. The lights allow the robots to communicate with their giving back mechanical brethren, enabling them to operate as a swarm and adjust ieee secretary Barry l. shoop helped their positions relative to each other. IEEE Spectrum Online shows you establish an engineering school in how today’s robots are gaining new abilities to swim, skip, and nuzzle Afghanistan, which recently graduated in a convincingly lifelike way. its first class.

oNliNe FeAtUres: Also oNliNe: ieee and eta could The biggesT photovoltaic • webcasts kappa nu power plant in the eastern United • Podcasts Sign Merger states be justified without renewables • News mandates and generous subsidies? • videos agreeMent IEEE Spectrum’s Bill sweet investigates. • Blogs ieee has signed a merger agreement • Jobs with the engineering honor society keep pace with the latest major • career Accelerator eta Kappa Nu, which has nearly 200 software crashes and system failures on • ieee Xplore® digital library university chapters and more than robert N. charette’s risk Factor blog. • interviews 100 000 members who have made follow specTrum on TwiTTer • opinions significant accomplishments in Contains over 25% Renewable Resources for the latest tech news and views. • More! electrical and computer engineering.

ieee spectrum (issN 0018-9235) is published monthly by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers, inc. All rights reserved. © 2009 by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers, inc., 3 Park Avenue, New york, Ny 10016-5997, U.s.A. 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.c anadian gst #125634188. Printed at w224-N3322 Duplainville rd., Pewaukee, wi 53072-4195, U.s.A. ieee spectrum circulation is audited by BPA worldwide. ieee spectrum is a member of American Business Media, the Magazine Publishers of America, and the society of National Association Publications. www.SpectruM.ieee.org APril 2009 • ieee sPectrUM • NA 3 back story

EditoriAl

Editor in chiEf Susan hassler, [email protected]

ExEcutivE Editor Glenn Zorpette, [email protected]

ManaGinG Editor Elizabeth a. Bretz, [email protected]

SEnior EditorS harry Goldstein (online), [email protected]; Jean Kumagai, [email protected]; Samuel K. Moore (news), [email protected]; tekla S. Perry, [email protected]; Philip E. ross, [email protected]; david Schneider, [email protected]; William Sweet, [email protected]

SEnior aSSociatE Editor Steven cherry (resources), [email protected]

aSSociatE EditorS Sally adee, [email protected]; Erico Guizzo, [email protected]; Joshua J. romero (online), [email protected]; Sandra upson, [email protected]

aSSiStant Editor Willie d. Jones, [email protected]

SEnior coPy Editor Joseph n. Levine, [email protected]

coPy Editor Michele Kogon, [email protected]

EditoriaL rESEarchEr alan Gardner, [email protected]

ExEcutivE ProducEr, SPEctruM radio Sharon Basco

aSSiStant ProducEr, SPEctruM radio francesco ferorelli, [email protected]

adMiniStrativE aSSiStantS ramona Gordon, [email protected]; coaxed collectors in the Middle East nancy t. hantman, [email protected] into selling their prized Egyptian contriButinG EditorS John Blau, robert n. charette, Running Peter fairley, alexander hellemans, david Kushner, desert cockroaches (Polyphaga robert W. Lucky, Paul Mcfedries, Kieron B. Murphy, aegyptiaca) for about US $10 a bug. carl Selinger, Seema Singh, John voelcker With Robots Goldman, too, contributes a Art & productioN catch or two. He grew up chasing SEnior art dirEctor Mark Montgomery ow hard can it be to make ghost crabs on the sandbar islands aSSociatE art dirEctor Michael Solita a lizard run? Just ask the of North Carolina and five-lined aSSiStant art dirEctor Brandon Palacio researchers in Daniel skinks around his home in Photo Editor randi Silberman H dirEctor, PEriodicaLS Production SErvicES Peter tuohy Goldman’s laboratory at Georgia Richmond, Va. At the age of 10 he EditoriaL & WEB Production ManaGEr roy carubia Tech. “It’s very high tech,” says learned how to snag one of those SEnior ELEctronic Layout SPEciaLiSt Bonnie nani

Goldman [left]. “We startle it.” lizards: He’d dangle a coil of rope WEB Production coordinator Jacqueline L. Parker

They wave bits of cardboard, on a pole and stand several steps MuLtiMEdia Production SPEciaLiSt Michael Spector flash lights, and gently pinch the from his target. Then he’d lower the EditoriAl AdviSory BoArd lizards’ tails. Then they do it again. noose around its neck and pull up, Susan hassler, Chair; Marc t. apter, francine d. Berman, And again. And again. “Sometimes ensnaring the thrashing skink and Jan Brown, raffaello d’andrea, Stephen L. diamond, hiromichi fujisawa, Kenneth y. Goldberg, Susan hackwood, Bin he, Erik I try to make a noise, but that delivering it unharmed to a cloth bag. heijne, charles h. house, david h. Jacobson, christopher J. doesn’t seem to work,” says Chen Li, But unlike lizards in the wild, James, ronald G. Jensen, Mary y. Lanzerotti, ruby B. Lee, tak a physics graduate student [right]. captive animals can be exhaustingly Ming Mak, david a. Mindell, c. Mohan, fritz Morgan, andrew M. odlyzko, Leslie d. owens, Barry L. Shoop, Larry L. Smarr, The 65 lizards, crabs, and placid. “I can say, ‘Animal, go!’ or harry L. “nick” tredennick iii, Sergio verdu, William Weihl, cockroaches in Goldman’s lab ‘Animal, move your legs in a certain Bas¸ak yüksel can be ornery companions to the way,’ and it won’t do that,” Goldman EditoriAl corrESpoNdENcE one robot that beats a steady path reports. Indeed, an annoyed ghost iEEE Spectrum, 3 Park ave., 17th floor, new york, ny 10016-5997 attn: Editorial dept. tel: +1 212 419 7555 fax: +1 212 419 7570 down a track in the lab. In “March crab may instead go on the offensive, Bureau: Palo alto, calif.; tekla S. Perry +1 650 328 7570 of the SandBots,” Goldman and snapping its claws energetically at responsibility for the substance of articles rests upon the authors, not the iEEE or its members. articles published do not his colleagues explain how they its appointed frightener. represent official positions of the iEEE. Letters to the editor may invested in that robot the tricks Li, who grew up watching animal be excerpted for publication. they’d learned about sand scam- documentaries in China, hadn’t AdvErtiSiNg corrESpoNdENcE pering from the finest desert run- anticipated how unpredictable the iEEE Spectrum, 3 Park ave., 17th floor, new york, ny 10016-5997 ners on the planet. animals would be. So when it’s the attn: advertising dept. +1 212 419 7760 the publisher reserves the right to reject any advertising. But building a bio-inspired robot robot’s turn to strut, the physicists can involve a few odd negotiations. breathe a sigh of relief. “The robot rEpriNt pErmiSSioN LiBrariES: articles may be photocopied for private use To acquire some of the creatures in gives us data that’s more repeatable,” of patrons. a per-copy fee must be paid to the copyright Goldman’s menagerie, one student Li says. “It’s very nice.” o clearance center, 29 congress St., Salem, Ma 01970. for other copying or republication, contact Business Manager, iEEE Spectrum. citiNg ArticlES iN iEEE SpEctrum coPyriGhtS and tradEMarKS: iEEE Spectrum is a registered d

IEEE Spectrum publishes two editions. in the international edition, the abbreviation int appears at the Y trademark owned by the institute of Electrical and Electronics foot of each page. the north american edition is identified with the letters na. Both have the same editorial content, but because of differences in advertising, page numbers may differ. in citations, Engineers inc. careers, EEs’ tools & toys, Ev Watch, Progress, you should include the issue designation. for example, the first update page is in IEEE Spectrum, reflections, Spectral Lines, and technically Speaking are trademarks of the iEEE. vol. 45, no. 4 (int), april 2009, p. 7, or in IEEE Spectrum, vol. 45, no. 4 (na), april 2009, p. 11. Yvonne Bo

 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org iEEE mEdiA Staff Director; PubliSher, IEEE SpEctrum James a. Vick, [email protected] aSSociate PubliSher, SaleS & aDVertiSing Director Marion Delaney, [email protected] BILL ARNOLD are teaching robots new tricks recruitMent SaleS DeVeloPMent Manager has been chief for conquering sandy terrain in Michael buryk, [email protected] buSineSS Manager robert t. ross scientist at ASML “March of the SandBots” [p. 30]. Marketing & ProMotion Manager blanche Mcgurr, since 1998, which Goldman, an assistant professor [email protected] means he’s helping of physics at Georgia Tech, stud- interactiVe Marketing Manager ruchika anand, [email protected] liSt/recruitMent Marketing Manager ilia rodriguez, to shape the next generation of ies how the animals move their [email protected] lithographic processes. His article, limbs, while his colleagues at rePrint SaleS +1 212 221 9595, ext. 319 DePartMent aDMiniStrator faith h. Jeanty, [email protected] “Shrinking Possibilities” [p. 26], is the University of Pennsylvania— aDVertiSing SaleS +1 212 419 7760 about the future of chipmaking, the Koditschek, an electrical telePhone aDVertiSing/SaleS rePreSentatiVe John restchack +1 212 419 7578 inevitability of extreme ultraviolet engineering professor, and aDVertiSing ProDuction Manager felicia Spagnoli lithography, and how the continued Komsuoglu, a postdoctoral fellow Senior aDVertiSing ProDuction coorDinator nicole evans realization of Moore’s Law will in Koditschek’s lab—refine their aDVertiSing ProDuction +1 732 562 6334 ieee Staff executiVe, PublicationS anthony Durniak affect the semiconductor industry. robots’ abilities to perceive and iEEE BoArd of dirEctorS respond to their environments. PreSiDent & ceo John r. Vig TAVIS COBURN, +1 732 562 3928 fax: +1 732 465 6444 [email protected] based in Toronto, PETER KOCH and RAMJEE PreSiDent-elect Pedro a. ray treaSurer Peter W. Staecker draws inspiration PRASAD, who explain how Secretary barry l. Shoop from printed software-defined radio will soon PaSt PreSiDent lewis M. terman materials of the 1920s transform cellphones in “The VicE prESidENtS teofilo ramos, Educational Activities; Jon g. rokne, Publication to the 1960s, including the Russian Universal Handset” [p. 36], are Services & Products; Joseph V. lillie, Member & Geographic avant-garde and classic comic books. professors at Aalborg University, Activities; W. charlton adams, President, Standards Association; harold l. flescher, Technical Activities; gordon W. Day, President, He started out creating illustrations in Denmark. Koch works at the IEEE-USA by hand with paint and silk screens. university’s Center for Software diViSioN dirEctorS Now he achieves similar effects with Defined Radio and also operates giovanni De Micheli (i); robert e. hebner Jr. (ii); curtis a. Siller Jr. (iii); roger W. Sudbury (iV); digital tools. For the opening image an amateur radio station for Deborah M. cooper (V); Mark i. Montrose (Vi); John D. McDonald (Vii); Stephen l. Diamond (Viii); of “The Universal Handset” [p. 36], fun. He’s shooting to reach frederick c. Mintzer (ix); richard a. Volz (x) Coburn says, “I went with old radio other hams in all parts of the rEgioN dirEctorS towers, which look a lot cooler than world. “I’m not there yet,” he howard e. Michel (1); William P. Walsh Jr. (2); William b. ratcliff (3); Don c. bramlett (4); David J. Pierce (5); leonard J. bond (6); modern cell antennas.” says. Prasad, an IEEE Fellow, ferial el-hawary (7); Jozef W. Modelski (8); enrique e. alvarez heads the university’s Center (9); yong Jin Park (10) DANIEL P. DERN for TeleInfrastructure. He, too, dirEctorS EmErituS eric herz, theodore W. hissey wrote for us in enjoys making international December 2008 contacts, but rather than doing so iEEE StAff huMan reSourceS betsy Davis, SPhr about his search for wirelessly, he regularly travels to +1 732 465 6434, [email protected] PublicationS anthony Durniak the perfect ultralight the far corners of the world. +1 732 562 3998, [email protected]

eDucational actiVitieS Douglas gorham oburn laptop. In January, he spent a good C +1 732 562 5483, [email protected] vis portion of this year’s Consumer JOHN VOELCKER, StanDarDS actiVitieS Judith gorman tA Electronics Show looking at new IEEE Spectrum’s +1 732 562 3820, [email protected]

MeMber & geograPhic actiVitieS cecelia Jankowski illey; battery technologies that would automotive editor, +1 732 562 5504, [email protected] l add hours—but not ounces—to covers the part of corPorate Strategy & coMMunicationS Matthew loeb, cae

+1 732 562 5320, [email protected] rnest e

small gadgets. As he reports in the business that’s buSineSS aDMiniStration richard D. Schwartz n; A Update [p. 16], a number of slighted by most industry +1 732 562 5311, [email protected] technical actiVitieS Mary Ward-callan

sophisticated battery-recharging mavens: technology. In this +1 732 562 3850, [email protected] ilberm s Managing Director, ieee-uSa chris brantley systems are almost ready for year’s iteration of the annual ndi +1 202 530 8349, [email protected] rA widespread adoption. Top 10 Tech Cars report [p. 42], ; iEEE puBlicAtioN SErVicES & productS BoArd sml his sixth, he argues that Jon g. rokne, Chair; tayfun akgul, tariq S. Durrani, DANIEL GOLDMAN, HALDUN technology will matter even more Mohamed e. el-hawary, gerald l. engel, gerard h. gaynor, Marion o. hagler, Jens hannemann, lajos hanzo, KOMSUOGLU, and DANIEL now that the auto industry is hirohisa kawamoto, Michael r. lightner, lloyd a. Morley, William W. Moses, adrian V. Pais, Saifur rahman, Sorel reisman, KODITSCHEK describe how passing through its biggest edward a. rezek, barry l. Shoop, W. ross Stone, robert J. trew, leung tsang, karl r. Varian, Stephen yurkovich lizards, crabs, and cockroaches contraction in a lifetime. iEEE opErAtioNS cENtEr kwise fromleft: A top 445 hoes lane, box 1331, Piscataway, nJ 08854-1331 u.S.a. C

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 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org W United Nations Framework United Framework Nations University, York New in City, wanting neither. So U.S. Institute, sheds some light on light some sheds Institute, President Barack Obama is climate change from a policymaking and financial markets perspective. markets financial and apolicymaking from climate change Susan 25 February. on blog a or Cap and Tax? Cap and Trade last October at Columbia at Columbia October last looking for ways to kick the clamoring have consumers Change, and Jeffrey Sachs, Sachs, Jeffrey and Change, Convention on Climate Congress in February, Obama spectral lines production of more renewable pollution and drives the to developincentive these tend to the hit projects the subject. the tion is, Will a cap-and-trade for Toyota Priuses. between Yvobetween de Boer, the result—a robust renewable market-based cap on me legislation that places a nomic crisis has simply technologies new of Kyotothe Protocol, which of the secretary executive energy program—better than energy in America.” The ques called on lawmakers “to send energy development, into gear. economy, and renewable prices high Hummers; on the a straight carbon tax? director of Columbia’s Earth of Columbia’s Earth director bring prices Low disappears. sets limits on greenhouse- limits sets system deliver the desired economic the because skids,  version of this column appeared in in appeared column of this version NA • iEEE Sp iEEE • NA A discussion held held A discussion The current global eco De Boer argued the merits merits the argued Boer De In his address to the U.S. henever oil oil henever renewable energy energy renewable gas prices plummet, plummet, prices gas E ctrum • April 2009 April • ctrum consumers

carbon a and and rterian rterian - - c ieee “Climate change is a global aglobal is change “Climate hang reports on the impacts of impacts the on reports hang The The CDM allows industri way out of carbon compliance. works in progress. And, he And, works progress. in Development Mechanism. Framework is Clean the have gone ahead even with CDM projects in 49 develop programs and the CDM, CDM, the and programs countries ized to buy their ing countries. Critics argued developing In in countries. nations and led toindustrial problem, and we will need need we will and problem, money flows,”public said. he trade have not demonstrated and private both to spur “We of tools aset need taxes. worthy are imperfect, though that the CDM is no more than that these projects would there are now 1170 registered own carbon-reductiontheir countries industrialized the Union’s European the carbon- mechanisms like cap and receive emission-reduction for investment, their return carbon-cap-and-trade carbon-cap-and-trade out outside investment and apply can they credits toward projects technology clean elementcentral of Kyotothe system. A trading emission complementary set of carbon of carbon set complementary goals or sell toor goals sell others. for emissions gas signatory a cheap way for industrial to countries finance alized argued that market-based tools at disposal.” our the all said, he did not oppose a not oppose he did said,

Spectrum Spectrum De Boer countered that that countered Boer De De reported thatBoer Sachs, for his part, o nline’s nline’s e nergywise nergywise - - - - What’s more, he argued, cap hand, require monitoring upstream—at the refinery keen on sending our best financial market engineering” people and put them to tasks instruments. “I am not so trade systems, on the other to administer than a cap- that don’t solve problems.” for the carbon markets, he that isn’t going to really trajectory of carbon emissions that they can turn the economy,” he said. Cap-and- or the wellhead—you reach carbon from, and by taxing carbon tax is much easier continued deployment of of how energy is produced change the broad framework generation of brilliant young a carbon price for the whole are just a few places we get and-trade scheme. “There and brightest off to do more and trade encourages the and technology distributed.” a very small, marginal tool as we need to do it.” The CDM, as “sharply and dramatically questionable, risky financial shows how we took a said. “I think the meltdown said Sachs, “is unfortunately Sachs believes that a America’s Energy Security A more price certain for car volatility, a carbon wouldtax John Larson (D-Conn.) Trust Fund Act of 2009, Editor’s note: which proposes a carbon tax waiting for Congress to act on ways to get carbon dioxide which, Sachs suggested, Rather than allowing Wall his suggestion. he isn’t holding his breath under control. But, Sachs said, let real engineers figure out long-term investment in clean keeps a lot of regulators, introduced the bill known as put a floor onthe price of car to reduce carbon emissions. time, U.S. Representative trade, a carbon wouldtax to make money from cap and technologies, said Sachs. the compliance of hundreds bon would encouragein turn bon, holding it to a fixed price. but has a questionable impact Street’s engineers financial on carbon emissions. of thousands of enterprises, attorneys, and auditors busy system that thrives on price Unlike a cap-and-trade

—Susan Arterian Chang Arterian —Susan www.spectrum.ieee.org At publication - -

Jacquelyn Martin/aP Photo forum

based cryptography shipping in all Nvidia is further advanced graphics-processing tools & toys than the article units (GPUs). Intel’s x86 Winner: Poseidon of hours of human test dives. The upshot to an optimal fit. Dry, the unit weighs implies. The architecture is not the is a system that takes on the decisions around 15 kilograms, which is a bit discovery that burden conventional CCR divers— lighter than a typical open-circuit rig. the world’s leading and, at times, Stone says, makes better I understood the display without any designer of scuba gear decisions than humans. real instruction. Stone told me to expect NTRUEncrypt solution to the parallel- brings closed-circuit Consider an emergency requiring some alarms due to some software rebreathers to the masses a quick ascent or descent. Maybe you revisions they’re working on. This need to get to the surface quickly or dive allowed me to see the warning icons, feel his month, Swedish scuba down to a fellow diver in trouble. These the mouthpiece vibration, and switch to lattice-based system, computing problem— manufacturer Poseidon Diving rapid changes are problematic with a open-circuit bailout. No issues here. T Systems plans to introduce conventional CCR because you can’t Discovery also did well at handling an electronically controlled change your oxygen-nitrogen ratio or rapid breathing, a common problem closed-circuit rebreather breathing-gas volume quickly enough. in all scuba gear, open or closed, first proposed namely, how to split (CCR) called Discovery, which You’re left with either too much or too especially at greater depths. At its promises to change mainstream little oxygen—and either situation is worst, you feel like you’re breathing sport diving the way Microsoft life-threatening. According to Stone, through a soda straw while running a Windows changed computing. however, Discovery’s predictive marathon. I huffed and puffed as hard in 1996, has your problem into Rebreathers, which have been modeling recognizes the abnormal as I could, simulating rapid breathing, around for decades, greatly decisions. Even with electronic systems, earliest Windows software had many descent or ascent and adjusts the mix but Discovery kept up. increase dive time but at an problems aren’t always obvious. more lines of code than MS-DOS. The of breathing gases based on where the When I surfaced, Stone asked me enormous cost in complexity, So until now, sport use of CCRs has result is a CCR design that’s an order diver will be rather than trying to keep how the hoses felt, referring to the been extensively many parts to speed training, and setup time. been limited to a relatively hard-core of magnitude more sophisticated than up with where the diver is. tendency for many CCRs to restrict Poseidon’s new system is designed cadre of “tec” divers who are willing to what came before it. Under Stone’s guidance, I tried a beta comfortable head movement. I realized to do away with all that. In deal with these hassles and risks. Even The heart of Discovery is a set of 8-bit unit in a swimming pool. Setup took a I hadn’t even thought about the hoses. October, the company gave me the First breath: closed-circuit rebreathers, long many professionals have stayed with microprocessors distributed around mere 10 minutes, compared with an hour My dive lasted only 30 minutes and researched and up computation. Few system for a 30-minute test splash the scuba technology of choice for professionals, the simplicity of open-circuit scuba. the rig to provide computing power for conventional rebreathers. You just didn’t go deeper than about 2.5 meters, during a trade show in Las Vegas. may soon be available to amateur divers. Discovery may change all that. It is where it’s needed. Discovery not only change out the scrubber canister, attach so I wasn’t able to see how Discovery pHoToS: Top, poSeidon diVing SySTemS; BoTTom, Karl SHreeVeS To see what sets Discovery the culmination of 20 years of design monitors all subsystems but also collects two filled gas cylinders, and turn it on. performed at depths that would truly apart, let’s review some scuba and development by Bill Stone, arguably breathing and environmental data to Underwater, the harness and weight test the system’s capabilities. Still, I’m deployed. In fact, it applications are able to basics. The conventional scuba boundaries. The resulting gas goes to the most innovative and experienced update its models in real time. That distribution felt comfortable and tight left with the impression that this may equipment that Jacques Cousteau a second counterlung, then back to you CCR engineer alive, famous for leading data is applied against a 160 000-entry immediately; normally it takes one or indeed be the first CCR for casual introduced in 1943 has an open circuit. when you inhale. several milestone cave-diving projects. decision table, gathered from thousands two dives to get any scuba rig “tuned” recreational divers. —Karl Shreeves The regulator supplies air from the tank, Closed-circuit rebreathers can give Since the mid-1980s, Stone and other was standardized make use of a quad-core and your exhaled breath vents into the you seven times as much dive time as divers have used limited-production water as bubbles. Your body uses only a standard scuba equipment, regardless rebreathers that use computer controls to “crystal-clear high-resolution 2-D and 3-D,” worst of all, the thing works only with fraction of the oxygen in each breath; the of depth. They also make it easier for improve operation and make the device loser: eyes “lightweight and ergonomic design ensures long ipods that have better screens than it does. rest is wasted. At higher pressures, each your body to adapt to changes in water easier to use. He has taken his Cis-Lunar Wide shut use in perfect comfort.” what’s not to love? in fact, the “virtual 62-inch big screen” turns in December 2008, central-processing unit breath takes more from your cylinder, so pressure, because they adjust the ratio of Mark III, IV, and V models, designed But the AV920 doesn’t deliver. it’s made of out to be 640 by 480, which the world Display glasses still aren’t flimsy soft plastic, yet its edges are so badly hasn’t called “high resolution” since windows you use up your air faster just when you nitrogen to oxygen as you go up or down. for science and exploration, to depths in ready for prime time finished that they scratch behind the ears.i ts 3.0. with their us $350 price tag, i can’t need it the most—on your deepest dives. The downside is complexity. It can take excess of 120 meters—edgy stuff. stereo earbuds are mounted on stiff rubber help but compare these virtual-reality by none other (CPU) today, so how A rebreather with a closed circuit up to an hour, even for experienced The Discovery Cis-Lunar Mark VI, coulD stock a computer-peripheral arms that are hard to bend into shape and glasses unfavorably to the $500 1080p HD gets around the problem by salvaging divers, to set up and check a CCR though, is the first to use sophisticated museum with all the input and output devices were too short to reach my ears. And, oh yes, televisions at my local costco. i’ve accumulated over the years. Drawing the sound quality is unremarkable. playing Soulcalibur iV on the floor instead oxygen in your breath. You exhale compared with a few minutes for an predictive modeling to make many of i tablets, three-dimensional mice, dial boxes, of on my couch, tethered to the Xbox 360, into a counterlung, a gas bladder that open-circuit system. Then, underwater, the complicated decisions that divers rotatable monitors, touch pads—if it purports was downright unenjoyable. And the glasses than IEEE (as will companies solve expands and contracts as you breathe. CCR divers must decipher multiple have had to make themselves, after to make using software easier or games didn’t work with my computer; the company The air then passes through a chemical- readouts—including sensor readings, undergoing many hours of training; more enjoyable, i have probably tried it and wants me to buy another model to do that. absorbent canister that removes supply pressures, decompression status, it is designed for mainstream divers consigned it to a plastic bin in my basement. the personal-display industry has made great that’s where the Vuzix iwear AV920 strides in recent years. unfortunately, these carbon dioxide. Sensors analyze the oxygen exposure status, oxygen partial going no deeper than 40 meters. personal-display eyewear will be going. strides have not been great enough to make IEEE Std 1363.1). this problem when they oxygen content and direct the system pressure, and scrubber life; recognize Though the Discovery is vastly simpler these display glasses, said to be compatible display glasses more desirable than traditional to add either pure oxygen or regular the combined effects of all those to use than its limited-production with ipods, Xboxes, ps3s, DVD players—any displays. save your money for something useful, air, whichever is needed to keep the variables on dive time; and make what predecessors, its inner workings are Vuzix audiovisual device at all!—sounded wonderful: or risk adding to your own peripheral museum. “a wearable virtual 62-inch big screen,” —Harry Teasley oxygen concentration within its proper are in effect tens of thousands of implicit much more complex—just as even the NTRUEncrypt has move to multiple cores?

www.spectrum.ieee.org www.spectrum.ieee.org 28 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • JANuAry 2009 JANuAry 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 29 been the subject of Also, the fact that the dozens of papers, chip is x86 based does has been licensed not mean it will become Letters do not FIRST, TAKE A of these devices to net to companies such immediately prevalent, represent opinions DEEP BREATH… a profit? Given the as Infospace, and is nor will it necessarily of the Ieee. short, concise letters are s the director supposed minimal skill under consideration for be simple to program. preferred. they Aof primary care levels needed to use standardization by the The x86 architecture may be edited for diving medicine with it, this rebreather is in Accredited Standards is somewhat like the space and clarity. Jefferson Internal full control and is likely Committee X9 for use engine under the hood Additional letters are available online Medicine Associates, fully liable. in financial services. of a car: Everyone Marvin E. Gozum in “And More Forum” I note that the article Therefore, it is the clear knows how to drive, but IEEE Member at http://www. on the Poseidon leading candidate for almost no one knows Philadelphia spectrum.ieee.org. Discovery rebreather adoption if quantum how the engine actually Write to Forum, [Tools & Toys, Executive Editor (and computers force RSA works or how to IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave., 17th January] discounts scuba diver) Glenn and elliptic-curve tweak it for maximum Floor, New York, NY the fact that manual Zorpette responds: cryptography to be performance. More 10016-5997, U.s.A.; or electronically I regret that space withdrawn. than 110 million CUDA- fax, +1 212 419 7570; driven rebreathers constraints did not William Whyte enabled GPUs have e-mail, n.hantman Acton, Mass. @ieee.org. still have a fatality allow us to more been sold and deployed rate greater than that adequately address in data centers and on of open-circuit scuba, the safety issue. CHIPPED OFF desktops, giving users even among highly Rebreathers are high ulticore 20 to 200 times as much trained technical-level tech and amazing, but MMade Simple” computing speed as divers. Maybe the anecdotal evidence, [Winners & Losers VI, before. Intel graphics Discovery Mark VI’s at least, suggests that January] contained chips have lagged for software can react rebreather dives are some misconceptions years, and they have a faster than humans still not as safe as open- about Intel’s future lot to prove before they can, but if we still circuit, recreational (no- Larrabee chip and deserve the credibility don’t have software decompression) dives. Nvidia’s parallel- they are being given. fully in control of computing architecture, Andrew Humber airplanes or driving CODELAND Compute Unified Senior PR Manager Computing Products our cars in slow- SECURITY Device Architecture Nvidia moving traffic, how hanks for the (CUDA), which is now Santa Clara, Calif. will a fully automated T informative article rebreather perform? “Cryptographers Is the reliability-over- Take On Quantum CORRECTION liability ratio so great Computers” [Update, The letter “Memristor Mechanics” [Forum, February] that Poseidon would be January]. However, the should have been attributed to H. Robert Schroeder,

willing to field enough state of the art in lattice- IEEE Member, Ewing, N.J.

10 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.SpEcTRuM.IEEE.oRg more online at www.spectrum.ieee.org

and displacement gauges, three- Smart Span: dimensional accelerometers, The Rion-Antirion Bridge in Greece, Despite Stimulus Money, Most tiltmeters, temperature sensors, studded with and other instruments. They are 300 sensors, U.S. Bridges Might Stay Dumb wired to central data-acquisition is among the smartest Sensors are starting to prove themselves in the units—though some newer bridges have wireless systems—which structures in biggest, most complex bridges, but the technology the world. collect and analyze the information photo: Grant Faint/ isn’t ready for the hundreds of thousands of and relay it to engineers, in hopes Getty imaGes smaller ones of catching signs of distress before human inspectors could. he 2.9-kilometer Rion- day,” says Ale �andre �haperon, �ith the United States injecting Antirion Bridge in Greece, an engineer at the company that US $27.5 billion into revamping the T with its 300 sensors, is designed the system, Advitam, in country’s roadways and bridges a testament to how smart a Vienna, Va.“ “�ithout the moni-moni- as part of an $800 billion economic piece of infrastructure can be. It toring system, the bridge would stimulus effort, it might seem routinely tells operators when be closed after every earthquake, like a perfect opportunity to add an earthquake, frequent in those more than three days in some smarts to more bridges. parts, or high winds warrant cases, instead of 5 minutes.” But monitoring system costs shutting down traffic. Dozens of the largest and most are too high and the benefits “The bridge tolls are meant comple� bridges in the world unproven for most of the nearly to collect thousands of euros per are already studded with strain 600 000 bridges and overpasses www.Spectrum.ieee.org ApRil 2009 • iEEE SpEcTRum • NA 11 15 to 25 percent of long-term maintenance costs, says Advitam’s �haperon. The system has already identified two abnormal vibrations in the nearly five-year-old bridge. One of them, if not treated, could have led to damage to the stay cables. So engineers have installed additional dampers on cables in certain locations to prevent the problem. Foden says structure monitoring is costly mainly because there is no “one size fits all” system. Every bridge is unique and is e�posed to different traffic, weather, and terrain conditions. The instruments must be tailored to each structure and placed at crucial spots. And the more sensors, the better. HigH iQ: Accelerometers, tiltmeters, and strain gauges send their signals to remote engineers. photos: aDVitam �hen the I-35 bridge collapsed in Minneapolis in in the United States, e�perts fundamental knowledge to The systems also make 2007, it was due to a gusset say. Sensor systems seem start deploying such systems sense for bridges with plate failure, Foden says, to make sense only for and e�pect returns.” new designs that need to and a strain gauge at that big, comple� bridges and John De�olf, a civil and be tested, such as the Rion- particular gusset might have for those that are already environmental engineering Antirion, or for structures given a warning. “But there known to be in trouble. And professor at the University of like the long suspension can be thousands of gusset it will be many years before �onnecticut, in Storrs, who and cable-stay bridges plates on a bridge, and to these systems can be used has equipped si� bridges with that span waterways and put sensors everywhere on other bridges. up to 50 sensors each over cost hundreds of millions becomes impractical,” he An installation of sensors the past decade, has some of of dollars to build. “�ith adds. Analyzing data from on an e�isting bridge that the longest-term data in the these very comple� bridges thousands of sensors would would help save the owners country. At today’s costs and there is a benefit, and there only add to the cost. money and mitigate disasters level of knowledge, he says, are enough resources The National Institute of has not been demonstrated a monitoring system might available to apply that level Standards and Technology yet, says Emin Aktan, be of most use on “an older of effort and technology,” recently released new director of the Intelligent bridge that is nearing the says Andrew Foden, a funding for research on Infrastructure and Transport end of its life cycle or a bridge supervising engineer with low-cost wireless sensors Safety Institute at Dre�el with known problems.” infrastructure consulting and smart materials that University, in Philadelphia. However, there are potentially firm Parsons Brinckerhoff. can be built into a structure “There is no case where we an awful lot of those. In The monitoring system to measure changes, as well can say sensors have saved 2008, the U.S. Federal for the €630 million Rion- as other technologies that a lot of lives,” he says. For Highway Administration Antirion should be able to could bring down the cost of most bridges and overpasses listed about 152 000 bridges tell bridge operators when smart bridges. But results “it will take 5 to 10 more years as structurally deficient and where maintenance is from that research are likely before we have sufficient or obsolete. needed, potentially saving years away. —Prachi Patel

12 NA • iEEE SpEcTRum • ApRil 2009 www.Spectrum.ieee.org The amount that pc shipments are expected to decrease this year, according to market research firm Gartner, in Stamford, 11.9% conn. Remember how bad things seemed during the tech crash of 2001? pc shipments fell only 3.2 percent then.

at Pennsylvania State frequency with which the Automated University’s Smeal �ollege of digits 1 through 9 should Business, in University Park. appear in a particular He’s conducted a review of decimal place. For e�ample, Auditors to Chase the literature on the subject the digit 1 should appear and found that although data roughly 30 percent of the time Down Cheats mining alone has been used in the decimal place farthest Data mining and math tricks might catch to detect illicit activity such as to the left. Lists of numbers a madoff or an enron earlier credit card fraud, insurance manufactured by people, fraud, and unauthorized com- regardless of the purpose, puter system access, it is not a tend to violate this statistical n December, when Sherlock) detects anomalies reliable method for checking principle, giving an auditor a Bernard Madoff’s hedge such as a higher-than- all financial statements. clue that something is amiss. I fund turned out to be a normal number of credits One problem, says �hu, Nigrini uses off-the-shelf gigantic Ponzi scheme that to e�pense accounts or late- is that companies are less software to create statistical was US $50 billion in the red, posted transactions. These likely than ever to share the plots showing where and everybody wondered how are among the more than amount of general ledger how widely a company’s this had gone undetected 100 indicators of a significant data required to make numbers deviate. Asked if for more than a decade. risk of error or fraud taken data mining’s prediction, Benford analysis could be Amazingly, in separate audits, into account by the system, classification, and clustering used to reverse engineer a government auditors saw no says David M. Steier, director functions effective, citing passable list of fraudulent evidence of wrongdoing. of research at the company’s privacy as a concern. numbers, Nigrini says, Embarrassed into �enter for Advanced Mark J. Nigrini, a “Most fraudsters aren’t that action, the U.S. Securities Research in San Jose, �alif. professor of accounting sophisticated.” However, and E�change �ommission Researchers at the auditing and information systems at Nigrini acknowledges that (SE�) has announced plans firm are refining the software the �ollege of New Jersey’s his method has limitations, to implement an off-the-shelf so that as more data points School of Business, in Ewing, making it clear that a suite of electronic monitoring system are added, it becomes better is working on the problem tools is necessary. that tracks transactions at spotting these anomalies, using a method that might Though data mining conducted by 8000 hedge while reducing the number of require less invasive access and pattern recognition funds. The system will false positives. to data. Nigrini determines make it possible to search allow SE� accountants But there are big limits to whether a given data set has through a general ledger to e�amine hedge funds data mining’s fraud-finding been ginned up artificially with millions of transactions, using scenario analysis and potential, says �hao-Hsien by using Benford’s Law. This some of which have 50 000 dozens of different graphical �hu, a professor of informa- statistical phenomenon lines of detail, “technology representations of the data tion sciences and technology describes the relative alone can’t solve the fraud it collects. But the SE� is detection problem,” says intended to be the backstop Steier. “No matter how in the financial accounting good the system is, it’s no system, with most crooked substitute for an auditor’s firms getting caught by professional judgment.” internal or outside auditors. Asked whether Benford So technological sleuthing analysis would have foiled capability belongs in the the schemes of Enron and average auditor’s toolbo� and �orld�om e�ecutives, not just the government’s. Nigrini says that the Enron Firms such as gang would have been caught. Pricewaterhouse�oopers, a But �orld�om’s plot, which Big Four auditor, have been used real-world numbers working on data-mining that had been intentionally systems—software that looks mislabeled, would have for fraud by finding hidden passed the Benford sniff test. patterns in financial data. As this issue went to press, Pw�’s automated Ledger Con man: could software have stopped disgraced Nigrini was trying it out Analyzer (formerly known as financier Bernie madoff? photo: Lucas Jackson/reuters on Madoff. —Willie D. Jones www.Spectrum.ieee.org ApRil 2009 • iEEE SpEcTRum • NA 13 How much less carbon dioxide will be emitted per year as a result of the global recession, 1 GiGAToN according to New Energy Finance, in london. unfortunately, the lost investment in renewables, the research and consulting group says, could postpone the peak of world co2 emissions by more than a decade.

calls, the unit fools phones consumers and businesses into operating on a channel will likely begin buying en The Silence with no service. Derosier masse in the ne�t year or so says his system could be to improve cellular coverage of the Cellphones used legally in many parts indoors. Any cellphone in engineers are working on ways to disable of the world, including the the vicinity of a femtocell contraband cellphones European Union, although will connect to it wirelessly, not in the United States. and in turn the femtocell ou’re enjoying Derosier, a founder of �ell Aaron Dow, an R&D will hook up with the mobile a rare bit of peace Block Technologies, in engineer for Alcatel-Lucent carriers’ networks through Y and quiet, perhaps Fairfa�, Va. “I went out in �ellington, New Zealand, a broadband Internet dozing on a train, when to a nice dinner with my and his colleagues have connection. “If we could adapt someone begins a loud wife—it was supposed to be tried a similar approach the femto solution to do the cellphone conversation romantic—and the guy at the to block cellphones at one blocking, it would be much nearby. Electromagnetic table ne�t to us started yelling prison, using a full-blown more attractive,” says Dow. countermeasures are Indeed, someone could available to reclaim the employ a femtocell to limit silence, but for the most part the use of cellphone handsets, they are illegal. In the United not just in prisons but in any States, for e�ample, only building. The gadget itself is federal agents can legally just a wireless access point, use signal jammers to block notes Manish Singh, vice cellular communications president for product-line by transmitting interfering management at �ontinuous signals. Even state prison �omputing, a San Diego– officials, who want jammers based company that provides, to prevent inmates from among other things, software talking on contraband for femtocells. A suitably cellphones, are barred from smart server attached to the using them. femtocell could screen calls This aspect of U.S. law in all sorts of ways. “You has created quite a stir in can block the traffic right

recent years. Things boiled loCk down: Technology that would squelch cellphone then and there,” says Singh. over in January, when signals rankles regulators. photo: martin meissner/ap photo A business setting up lawyers for the �TIA, a such a system would have wireless-industry association, at his kid on his cellphone,” cellular base station installed the technical ability to petitioned the courts to Derosier says of the incident nearby—“a honey pot” as he permit or deny calls to or forbid even a 30-minute that inspired him to create calls it. The idea is to make from cellphones located test of a cellphone-jamming the start-up. After briefly sure the phones all connect within its walls—but would system in a �ashington, considering the jamming with this station, which then that practice be allowed? In D.�., prison. On the flip of all cellphone frequencies, doesn’t service the calls. contrast to �i-Fi routers, side, legislation proposed he decided to find a more But this approach is femtocells operate in a in �ongress in January discerning way to prevent e�pensive—up to several licensed portion of the radio would legalize cellphone most cellphone conversations, hundred thousand U.S. spectrum, limiting what sorts jamming in prisons. while allowing emergency dollars, according to Dow. of functions vendors will One person who believes calls to get through. �osts should plummet, be permitted to offer, which he has a better solution Derosier’s prototype though, with a technology is why Singh regards such for prisons, concert halls, convinces nearby handsets that seems destined to filtering not as a technological or wherever cellphone to think it’s the cellular base become ubiquitous: femtocells. challenge but as “a regulatory communications are station with the best signal. These are small cellular base issue.” And it’s a thorny one prohibited is J. David But instead of handling most stations that residential at that. —David Schneider

14 NA • iEEE SpEcTRum • ApRil 2009 www.Spectrum.ieee.org Engineers Map Volcanic Lightning Lightning sensors could lead to better eruption warnings

olcanic eruptions are often accompanied by spectacular V bursts of lightning—Krakatoa, Mount St. Helens, and Vesuvius have provided some relatively FlaSH, CraCkle, pop! lightning might warn of imminent eruptions. photo: carLos GutierreZ/upi /LanDoV recent e�amples—and yet these breathtaking bolts are not well understood. Obtaining insight into in time to get all the data they wanted. and negative charges, respectively. They volcanic lightning, besides being of During the January 2006 eruption separate into layers, and the charge considerable scientific interest, could of Alaska’s Mount Augustine, the team builds up until the electric field is high make it possible to get earlier warnings arrived after the eruption had started enough to trigger lightning. The conven- of eruptions and might even yield clues and were able to set up only two sensors. tional wisdom has been that in volcanic to the origins of life. �ith those ends The data was not enough to generate eruptions, charged ash and rock debris in mind, electrical engineers at the three-dimensional images, but it revealed produce lightning by analogous pro- New Me�ico Institute of Mining and a new type of lightning. Until then, cesses. From what Thomas and his team Technology, in Socorro, have installed lightning in volcano plumes was known have already learned, volcanic lightning compact sensing stations of their own to resemble thunderstorm lightning— might be more comple� than that. design at Mount Redoubt in Alaska. highly branched flashes that last about If they are successful in developing Ronald Thomas, professor of elec- half a second. But at Mount Augustine a mapping system, it could provide trical engineering at the institute, and the researchers also found continuous, useful warning that an eruption has his colleagues plan to map the lightning e�plosive sparks that lasted only a few actually begun. “Just because a volcano from that volcano’s eruption in three milliseconds, which appeared at the is rumbling and making lots of seismic dimensions, hoping to illuminate what mouth of the volcano just when it started noise, you can’t tell whether it erupted,” causes electrification during some erup- erupting. This indicated that the eruption Thomas says. Tamsin Mather, a volcano tions and how volcanic lightning com- itself, not just the ejected ash and rock, researcher at the University of O�ford, pares with thunderstorm lightning, had created a large amount of charge. in England, adds that the sensors could which itself is not fully understood. Thomas is not sure how the charge is be a handy warning system especially The sensors, bo�ed in modified picnic generated, something he hopes the for “remote volcanoes in Alaska or coolers, record the time and magnitude of Redoubt e�periment will reveal. Kamchatka that don’t have people watch- the radio-frequency impulses that light- �hen the �haitén volcano erupted in ing them all the time but have plenty of ning creates. �orrelating the time that �hile in May 2008, Thomas’s team also planes that fly in the vicinity.” Airplanes the waves hit each receiver, the research- arrived later than was ideal, but this have unknowingly flown into ash, which ers triangulate the position of the radia- time they were able to get four sensors in has sometimes choked their engines. tion source in the sky to within 12 meters. place, giving them their first 3-D maps. Volcanic lightning could also yield They can then reconstruct the charge Preliminary analysis showed horizontal clues about Earth’s geological past, structure inside storm clouds, helping lightning up to 8 kilometers long. Mather says. And it could answer them understand what causes lightning At Redoubt, which is e�pected to questions about the beginning of life and when and how it touches the ground. erupt soon, they’ll have a head start on our planet. Scientists suspect that To study volcanic lightning, the and will for the first time be record- volcanoes on a primeval, sweltering researchers pack the sensors—along ing data right at the first eruption. Earth could have been the cradle of life. with 160 gigabytes of memory, worth Thomas’s hopes are high: “�e’ll get a They had the right ingredients: water, three months of recording time—into lot better estimate of what’s going on hydrogen, ammonia, and methane. 20-kilogram bo�es. Then the researchers inside the volcanic cloud.” Lightning would have been the essential must get the sensors to the right place at In the kind of storm clouds that gen- spark that converted these molecules the right time. On the first two occasions erate conventional lightning, ice particles into amino acids, the building blocks they tried this, they didn’t quite make it and soft hail collide, building up positive of protein. —Prachi Patel www.Spectrum.ieee.org ApRil 2009 • iEEE SpEcTRum • NA 15 is a breakthrough, says Bob �ichert, technical director of the First Affordable U.S. Fuel �ell �ouncil. “The difficulties in bringing fuel cells to the product Fuel Cells for stage have been greater than many Hydro-CHargerS: people anticipated,” he says. Fuel cells for portables have arrived. In fuel cells, hydrogen reacts photos: From top, horiZon FueL ceLL technoLoGies; meDis technoLoGies; JaDoo power Mobile Gear with o�ygen over a catalyst to make medis technologies has electricity and water, but because a unit operates close to the ambient a cheap, disposable canister of hydrogen is difficult to temperature—another reason it’s easier power pack. others aren’t come by, many fuel cells start with the and cheaper to manufacture. far behind hydrogen bound up in a hydrogen-rich So the Medis Power Pack is cheaper, fuel such as methanol and produce but is it cheap enough? The obvious carbon dio�ide as a by-product. comparison is to a sealed-unit AA bat- ccording to the U.S. Fuel Medis’s technology is unusual in that tery pack. Medis’s start-up cost is on �ell �ouncil, an industry it combines a hydrogen-rich liquid, a par with, say, the Duracell Instant A association, there are at least borohydride, with o�ygen to generate Power �harger, which can be had for 40 different fuel cells for portable, electricity, water, and the mineral $30. Then there’s the $20 you spend for stationary, and transportation bora�. “Borohydride is e�pensive every four or five charges. The Medis applications. But as compared to methanol, fuel cell may make sense only when you recently as last August, but it’s probably the don’t e�pect to have access to a recharge industry analysts were least technologically outlet or if the added weight of a saying that fuel cells demanding to bring to recharging unit is a concern—all-day air that were both small and market,” says Louis Stuhl, travel, for e�ample, or a camping trip. cheap enough to power an inorganic-chemistry �hile Medis can claim to be the cellphones, PDAs, and consultant and founder of first with a consumer-priced fuel cell digital cameras were still �hemMotif, in �oncord, for mobile devices, it may not be the “a year or so away.” Mass. Borohydride only player for long. At the January Medis Technologies, chemistry prevents �onsumer Electronics Show in Las in New York �ity, seems carbon dio�ide from Vegas, Horizon Fuel �ell Technologies to have proved them poisoning the fuel cell showed its MiniPak fuel cell, which it wrong. That August the catalyst, which is a big hopes to market sometime in 2009 for company started selling a recyclable problem for many other technologies, an e�pected price of $50. The charger fuel cell with a reusable power such as methanol fuel cells. will use drop-in solid-state metal- management cable for US $34.99, In methanol-based fuel cells, the hydride cartridges of different sizes that with fresh power packs for $20. This fuel is diluted with more than nine will cost about $1 per watt-hour. And makes Medis the first to market. But parts water to one part fuel in order Jadoo Power, which makes a 12-watt- competition is coming later this year to release the methanol’s hydrogen. hour recharger, unfortunately requiring from a number of companies. “�e can have a much higher fuel a 2-kilogram hydrogen canister, has The initial version of Medis’s cell, the concentration,” says Mark Kinkelaar, a whole new line of fuel cell products Power Pack Portable �harger, provides Medis’s senior vice president for coming out this year. 1 watt and is intended for only the technology and operations. Medis isn’t standing still low-power end of the gadget market— Because no dilution is either. It’s working on a no touch screens, for e�ample—and needed, “our fuel goes cartridge-based version of only four or five full charges at that. right to the anode, with no its power pack and plans to Medis subsequently released its higher- valves or pumps,” he says. work on a refuelable version; powered Xtreme 24/7 Portable Power Pumps reduce efficiency each would cut the total cost. Generator, which can charge a wider and add comple�ity—and “�e know 20 places to make range of products, including iPhones. cost. Moreover, methanol it better, but we need to start �hile far from perfect—Medis’s fuel cells can e�ceed to launch,” says Kinkelaar. power packs can’t be refilled—the cell 400 º�, whereas the Medis —Daniel P. Dern

16 NA • iEEE SpEcTRum • ApRil 2009 www.Spectrum.ieee.org 18 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org the big picture

PRIMARY COLORS What is television but the deft arrangement of red, green, and blue? At a late January event sponsored by Sony, British artist Paul Cocksedge made the point that no matter how fancy and feature-filled the TV set, red, green, and blue lights remain encoded in its DNA. His installation at the Tramshed gallery in London juxtaposed a simulation of the basic elements of a TV pixel—in the form of colored spotlights converging on a single white spot— with some advanced new Sony sets, including one with an organic LED screen and another as thin as a CD case. Image: Peter macdIarmId/ getty Images hands on

a challenge, but it’s easy if that a shorted wire would you have a copy of your car’s cause the injector to spray factory service manual, as fuel. I then routed the VSS I did. A resource that may and injector signals to my help others in identifying laptop’s line-in jack, confident ECU pin-outs is available on that they wouldn’t overload Innovate Motorsports’ Web the sound-input circuitry. site. (My vehicle isn’t listed, If this computer were doing so I can’t attest to this site’s anything besides gathering reliability. For this and other dust, I might worry about online resources, see the list voltage transients getting of URLs below.) past these diodes, but that Gaining access to really wasn’t a concern for my these connections on ancient Pentium machine. my 1997 Geo Metro was Having resurrected a straightforward, because 1990s-era laptop to monitor a the ECU is conveniently 1990s-era automobile, it was located directly behind the only fitting to use software A Fuel-economy GAuGe glove compartment. For of a similar vintage—Visual each signal, I used two Basic 6.0—to write the For the rest oF us resistors wired to provide a code that transforms the most cars—even older, cheaper ones— 10-to-1 voltage divider, and two signals into distance control their fuel electronically. Here’s how two back-to-back germanium traveled, gasoline used, and to tap into that signal diodes to clamp the divided- their quotient, miles per down signals to plus or gallon (others might prefer minus 0.3 volt. I placed these liters per 100 kilometers). he price of gasoline OBD-II port—cars made components close to the Using the FreeView Sound is down from its before 1996 typically don’t. ECU to minimize the risk driver (available at Technical- T stratospheric highs If you’re willing to do a of last July, but there are still little hacking to your ride, plenty of reasons to conserve there are cheaper ways. fuel and plenty of ways to do Do you have an old laptop so. Drivers can make changes gathering dust? Does it have in their cars and better yet, in a stereo line-in jack? If so, themselves; unfortunately, and your car’s engine is fuel the human element isn’t injected, you may be able easy to tweak. That’s partly to track your fuel economy because we lack detailed real- with just a few scrounged time data about which driving parts. I’ll first describe doing behaviors are wasteful. that and then an even better The information is easy to way—one that uses a new come by if you pay the price. $40 gadget instead of an A fuel-use monitor that plugs aging laptop. into the vehicle’s OBD-II The trick in either case jack—the onboard diagnostic is to tap two wires at your interface that mechanics engine-control unit (ECU)— use to diagnose problems— the one from the vehicle- MPGuino on Board: Adding this open-source fuel- will set you back US $160 speed sensor (VSS) and the economy monitor [top left] requires tapping two signals at (for the ScanGauge II, for one that controls the opening the car’s engine control unit. cutting the appropriate wires example) to about $280 of the engine’s fuel injectors. [top right] and soldering the ends together with an additional lead [bottom left] is the easiest approach. A few diodes (for the PLX Kiwi). That’s Finding which wires to and resistors [bottom right] limit the voltage swing. assuming you have an splice into may be a bit of photoS: DaviD SchneiDer

20 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org computing.com) made it a loose-screws ashtray. The snap to access the computer’s calibration values listed for audio-recording hardware. my model on the MPGuino Still, I spent a long weekend wiki (at EcoModder.com) Maplesoft Maple 12, MapleSim getting the rest of the code turned out to be spot-on, so written—including such setup wasn’t difficult. niceties as a screen for This little “carputer” viewing the raw signals and has opened my eyes to two simulated dashboard how my car uses gas and tools & toys gauges for instantaneous what I can do to limit the mpg and revolutions per burn rate. I’ve learned, for new mAth SolidWorks, allowing minute [opposite page]. example, that idling while an engineer to optimize It worked great, except stopped really does waste major updates from a design in Maple and for a couple of complications a significant amount of maplesoft, wolfram, then send data back to the I hadn’t counted on. The fuel—it’s outright painful Design science, CAD program. computer I used took forever to watch your trip-averaged and tera Analysis The new Exploration to boot—so much for hopping mpg tick downward while present engineers Assistant lets a user vary a in the car and darting off. waiting for a red light to with a calculatory parameter in an equation Also, there was no good place change. On the other hand, cornucopia or graph and see the to position the bulky laptop. sprightly acceleration burns results. And inexperienced So while the performance less fuel than I’d expected, he venerable math Maple users now have was good and the price was and it’s great to watch the programs Maple new templates that take right, this strategy ultimately instantaneous-mpg numbers T and Mathematica common commands. proved impractical. shoot up as you disengage long ago outgrew pure math Mathematica has had many I thus decided to replace the clutch, lift your foot off to include numerical and of these features for some the laptop with an open- the gas pedal, and coast. But symbolic math, graphics, time. It’s great to see that source fuel-economy leaving the car in gear to document preparation, competition between the computer called MPGuino. decelerate is often a good and more. Maplesoft and two companies is easing the This gadget is based on the conservation strategy, as it Wolfram have each recently learning curve users faced Arduino microcontroller can put the engine in fuel- released a major update— on earlier releases. and is available in kit form cutoff mode, which the Maple 12 and Mathematica 7— The new MapleSim is an for less than $40 from Spiff’s MPGuino shows. and Maple has a new elegant product that runs Electronics Notebook. I plan to hone my simulation package as in parallel with Maple 12. Assembling the MPGuino ecodriving skills with this well. The company is With a few mouse clicks, was a quick job, and having electronic aid. Perhaps by increasingly pitching to you can create, say, already located the VSS and this July, my 12-year-old, engineers—an approach that a model of a circuit, or injector signals, the biggest three-cylinder Geo will has long been successful for a thermal or mechanical challenge (as with many be challenging my town’s another big math program, system, and the program such do-it-yourself projects) many Priuses for bragging MathWorks’ Matlab. will transparently call was fashioning a suitable rights. In any event, I’ll For example, Maple’s on Maple 12 to show enclosure. I ended up with be ready if gasoline prices new Dynamical Systems how it performs. Models a RadioShack project box, again climb to levels that package helps users study which I mounted in front make your ears pop. the behavior of discrete and on the car’s used-only-for- —David Schneider continuous time systems, central to many signal- ECU pin-out diagrams: processing and control http://innovatemotorsports.com/resources/ecu_pinout.php applications. Maple can now FreeView Sound Software: communicate with the two http://technical-computing.com/freeviewsound.htm leading computer-aided Arduino microcontroller: http://arduino.cc design packages, Spiff’s Electronics Notebook: http://spiffie.org/electronics Autodesk Wolfram MPGuino wiki: http://ecomodder.com/wiki/index.php/MPGuino Inventor and Mathematica 7 www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 21 can even handle several domains, Do you want to copy an including motors, for example, equation from Wikipedia, as well as mechanical elements Mathematica, or Maple and and the attendant friction produce a nicely formatted and and backlash. editable equation in Microsoft MapleSim has a lot in Word? Or copy an equation from common with MathWorks’ a Word document and paste it Simulink, but, interestingly, as an executable equation into it works by finding the Maple? Developers have tried differential equations for a for years to build this kind of system, which Maple simplifies capability into applications analytically before solving. This using the language MathML process is potentially faster and [see “MathType 5 With MathML more accurate than Simulink’s for the WWW,” IEEE Spectrum, media purely numerical approach. December 2001] only to be Money for I found MapleSim easy and stymied by the way different Nothing even fun to use. But automating applications use different flavors Artist-­programmer it has some limits. Many of the of MathML. But now MathType Aaron Koblin scored a 2005 viral hit with things an engineer would want has translators built into it for his Flight Patterns, to do—for example, fitting data many different math packages, a time-­lapsed loop to a model to obtain a best set which should make copy-and- based on a day’s of parameters or tweaking a paste operations simple for the worth of airplane model’s parameters to meet user. Neat. flight data. More recently, he and design constraints—are likely Finally, there’s QuickField, fellow San Francisco to force you to delve deeply into which I first reviewed back artist Takashi Maple and possibly require in 1993 as a program that Kawashima tapped extra-cost software as well. numerically solved problems in Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk There is also a key restriction a variety of physical domains— network to create to lumped parameter models MaTH PaTH: mathematica [top] thermal, mechanical, electrical, a collage titled Ten (electrical circuits perhaps, but makes genetic imaging easy—well, mixed—using the finite Thousand Cents. no electromagnetics). easier. mathtype [center] lets you element method. It featured drag frequently used expressions to Mathematica tries even a nice graphical interface and the toolbar for easy pasting. maple harder than Maple to be all 12’s three-dimensional plots [bottom] blazingly fast calculations. things mathematical to all let you visualize complex data. Now, numerous versions later, people. Its latest version QuickField has acquired many can locate information whether the additional features advanced features, including They scanned a about subatomic particles, the of either program are worth a optimization, publication- US $100 bill, cut it human genome, historical pricey upgrade. quality graphics, and so

into 10 000 pieces, weather data, the geometry of Other programs for the on. There’s even a useful S ent c

and paid anonymous

polyhedrons, and on and on. The mathematically inclined textbook, James Claycomb’s D contributors a penny an

program also includes many continue to evolve as well. Design Applied Electromagnetics Using S each to copy a piece

new graphical and mathematical Science has a new version of QuickField & Matlab (Infinity hou with a software t

drawing tool, en

functions and supports parallel its stand-alone equation editor, Science Press, 2008), to go t without knowing the computing on computers with MathType 6.5. Engineers with a free student version hima/ overall design they multicore processors. acquainted only with the that you can download from S were contributing to. The work Users fortunate enough stripped-down MathType that’s QuickField’s Web site. hi Kawa S

appears through to work in institutions with embedded in Microsoft Word —Kenneth R. Foster a K a t 12 April at the maintenance contracts will will be pleasantly surprised to D Pasadena Museum probably have received these find a product that supports Maple 12: http://maplesoft.com of California Art. latest versions by now. The rest various mathematics markup Mathematica 7: http://wolfram.com See http://www. aaronkoblin.com. of us should carefully examine languages and a wide variety of MathType 6.5: http://dessci.com aron Koblin an

—Susan Karlin the vendor literature to decide application software. QuickField 5.6: http://quickfield.com a

22 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org careers

’til lAwsuits Do us PArt Noncompete clauses may hinder you less than you fear

ast November, Apple happily announced that it had hired L Mark Papermaster, a 26-year IBM veteran, to head up its iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams. IBM immediately sued Papermaster, claiming that his employment contract with Big Blue included a noncompete partner in the Washington, D.C., law decided according to New York state law. agreement prohibiting just such a move. offices of Banner & Witcoff. “There are This variability in enforcement can A U.S. federal district court quickly three types of limitations found in a lead to a certain amount of schizophrenia ordered Papermaster out of Apple until noncompete agreement—geographical, for those who cross state lines when they further notice. The two companies temporal, or line of business,” he says. jump from one job to the next. Take the agreed to a settlement in late January; “Courts base their rulings on whether curious case of Matt Marx, a software Papermaster will finally sit down at an any of them creates an unreasonable engineer who is now a Harvard Business Apple desk later this month. restriction on a worker’s ability to earn a School doctoral student. In 2001, still Noncompete clauses are essential living.” Thus, a court may void the con- bound by a noncompete agreement he to protect a company’s intellectual tract clause if it finds that forcing you to signed when he joined a Boston-based property, especially its trade secrets— remain unemployed for more than, say, a technology firm specializing in speech after all, they’re not good secrets if year does your career irreparable harm recognition, Marx was recruited by employees can leave and tell them by rendering you a high-tech dinosaur. another speech-recognition firm, in to the company’s competitors. But Another consideration, Dannenberg Silicon Valley. He let the noncompete courts are wary of these clauses and says, is whether the agreement was the clause in his Boston contract hold balance the protection of trade secrets result of a true arms-length negotiation: him fast until he found out about against an employee’s basic rights. “Prospective employees at the bottom California’s ban on such agreements. In its complaint, IBM asserted that of the food chain have little bargaining On the other hand, when Marx later Papermaster was “in possession of power and are in the position where returned to Harvard, he declined an significant and highly confidential IBM they either sign or don’t get the job.” offer of part-time consulting for one of trade secrets and know-how, as well as Dannenberg notes that was probably the founders of the Boston company highly sensitive information regarding not the case with Papermaster, who because he knew Massachusetts business strategy and long-term oppor- was a company vice president when he courts would enforce the noncompete tunities.” Papermaster had been IBM’s signed his contract with IBM in 2006. clause in his California contract. top blade-server guru, and the company What a U.S. court finds also depends No one can say how common offered him a substantial raise as an on where it’s located. California state noncompete agreements are because, enticement to stay—it even went so far as courts are unusual in that they generally as private contracts, they needn’t be to promise a year’s salary in exchange for refuse to enforce such agreements registered with a state authority (unlike not joining a competitor. In his counter- because of a statute outlawing them. a deed or marriage license). We hear only claim, Papermaster said his work for This has permitted rapid job switching about the cases, like Papermaster’s, that Apple would not impinge upon the agree- in Silicon Valley, which in turn has go to court. And even in the rare instance ment because he wouldn’t be working allowed the most talented people to of a David boldly and publicly taking on blade servers there and because move to the most innovative firms. An on a Goliath, an out-of-court settlement John John Apple’s focus is on consumer electronics, interesting wrinkle in the Papermaster is sure to follow, to avoid a pretrial l amb/Getty amb/Getty not large-enterprise applications. case was that although Apple is discovery process that would require Predicting how a trial court will headquartered in California—which both sides to reveal how the employee rule in a dispute over the validity of would ordinarily leave IBM little in question fits into their business i ma

G a noncompete agreement is a tricky recourse—the agreement he signed plans and other zealously guarded e S business, says Ross Dannenberg, a made it clear that any dispute would be corporate secrets. —Willie D. Jones

www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 23 technically speaking By Paul McFedries

sensors, and other ambient interfaces are connecting Information at Your Fingertips (deep networking) all such At the center of this will be the idea of digital convergence. That is, taking all the information— devices with the world and books, catalogs, shopping approaches, professional advice, art, movies—and taking those things in its staggering wealth of data. their digital form, ones and zeroes, and being able to provide them on demand on a device looking Devices thereby become like a TV, a small device you carry around, or what the PC will evolve into. environment aware,  —BillGates,“InformationatYourFingertips—2005,”(COMDEXkeynotespeech,1994) giving rise to so-­called ecological computing and information surfacing: icrosoft founder revealing previously hidden Bill Gates is famous for data that we or our devices M many things, includ-­ can use to better make our ing being the world’s richest way in this brave new world. person (until recently, anyway) The ultimate expression and being the world’s unoffi-­ of Information at Your cial Alpha Geek. However, in Fingertips will be ubicomp tech circles he’s also known (ubiquitous computing), where for his long-­standing belief we can harness data using that, as he once put it, “any everyday objects and inter-­ piece of information you faces (ambient informatics want should be available to in the lingo), which some you.” The idea wasn’t new— wag dubbed everyware. as far back as the 1970s, the Like the atmosphere itself, if motto of the Information something is everywhere it Industry Association was becomes nowhere; we cease “Putting Information at Your to notice it. Thus, pervasive Fingertips”—but Gates computing (also the name championed it as early as of an IEEE magazine, 1989, and he was in a position by the way) becomes to do something about it. It transparent computing. remained his overriding goal Expect to see a privacy for the next two decades. backlash against all this In fact, you could argue when people realize that once that IAYF (as the cooler the world’s information is at geeks now call it) has been Movie Database—that find anyone or anything their fingertips, information the goal for the entire tech information is iPhoneable. from anywhere at any time. about them is also at everyone sector for the past 20 years, Information at Your The key is the rise of small else’s fingertips. The new elite particularly since the Internet Fingertips went from pie-­ tech, particularly thin client will be the unGoogleables, broke out of its academic clois-­ in-­the-­sky to data-­in-­your-­ devices that are Web enabled. who’ve never posted anything ter and started cavorting in smartphone seemingly The slender iPhone is the online using a real name— the mainstream. But a funny overnight, and we’re just archetype here, but netbook no comments, no blog posts, thing happened between starting to realize how much computers—tiny PCs no newsgroup rants, no then and now: Quietly and findability (also called optimized for Web viewing Web pages—and so remain without much fuss, this Googleability) the world’s and other online activities— blissfully beyond the reach seemingly futuristic goal has data has. In fact, it’s turning also enable folks, wherever of Google and its ilk. Here’s pretty much become a reality. into what technologist John they are, to Google away and a can’t-­miss business idea for Wondering if that restaurant Seely Brown calls calm access cloudware. Mobile you, gratis: Start a company you see from your car window technology, remaining hardware such as digital audio that specializes in Google is any good? Ask your car’s in the background until players, GPS devices, and even scrubbing—removing GPS system. Somebody at needed, thus letting you digital cameras are becoming all traces of a person from dinner claims that Dustin interact with it in a calm, increasingly Web aware (or, Google’s servers. Let me Hoffman was inStar Wars? engaged manner. IAYF will at least Wi-Fi aware). Radio-­ know when you’re a going Whip out your iPhone and lead to an age of ambient frequency identification concern and I’ll look you up

look it up in the Internet findability, the ability to (RFID) tags, real-­world on my iPhone. o greg mably

24 NA • iEEE SPECTrum • APril 2009 www.sPectruM.ieee.org

Possibilitiesshrinking Lithography will need multiple strategies to keep up with the evolution of memory and logic By Bill arnold

Say good-bye to the node. We’re pulling out all the stops for the current gen-­ For 39 years, the node endured as the elusive and eration of chips. And if that sounds like a platitude yet universally accepted metric that semiconductor you’ve heard before, consider this fact: Nothing signifi-­ specialists used to indicate how small their transis-­ cant that we’re using now will work to create the chips tors were. Like depth readings on a wild descent into we plan to produce commercially just five or six years the infinitesimal, node figures were plotted out for from now—least of all the current method of lithog-­ the near future in a “road map” released annually by raphy. The next generation of chips won’t be possible the semiconductor industry associations of Europe, without the next generation of lithography. And that, in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. That map turn, means that the next generation of lithography will was, and is, a collection of the global semiconductor depend critically on what happens to the different chip-­ industry’s best ideas about how it was going to fulfill makers. For example, memory technology, an industry the Moore’s Law prophecy of a 30 percent shrink in that sees prices falling at the staggering rate of about transistor size—and consequent doubling in density— 40 to 50 percent per year, faces significant pressure to on chips every two years. scale up faster than logic devices do. But now, in the first tremor of what promises Industry observers will not be surprised by the to be a tectonic shift in the semiconductor indus-­ death of the node, as the node and half-­pitch, once try, the node is no more. For decades, makers of synonymous, have been diverging for some time. This logic chips used the concept of the “node” not only minor change foreshadows a big change in the way the to measure their transistors but also to indicate how lithography business will deal with memory versus advanced their chip-­fabrication lines were. Memory logic. For the first time, lithography will apparently chipmakers, meanwhile, used a different measure, have to adjust to follow both microprocessors and the half-­pitch, for the same purpose. Now lithography, different memories—including NAND flash, DRAM, the printing process at the heart of chipmaking, is and SRAM—down their respective paths, which have being pushed to extremes to get to the end of that road been diverging for decades. map. These extremes will affect different devices on Optical lithography, the most important and tech-­ different timescales, but the end of the road looks the nologically demanding aspect of chipmaking, is a pil-­ same for every device. lar that won’t be easily toppled. But the technology is at www.spectrum.ieee.org april 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • Na 27 a critical point. The technique, which uses radiation with about Seeing the light half the wavelength of purple light, is fast approaching steep, if the creation of 13.5-nanometer not insurmountable, obstacles. Unfortunately, none of the vari-­ photons requires some ous technologies proposed over the years to replace it has inspired creative contortions confidence that it will be ready when the time comes. Nevertheless, one thing is clear. From now on, the relation-­ strong beAm of euV light is difficult to achieve. no traditional ship between chips and lithography will be two-­way. Not only light source is capable of emitting 13.5-nanometer radiation. will the fate of chips depend on the future of lithography, but A therefore, only a small percentage of the radiation created at also the reverse will be true. the 13.5-nm wavelength reaches the photoresist to make the pattern. we make euV photons with a laser-produced plasma created by cymer, in san Diego. et’s start by defining our terms. Today’s most advanced microprocessors use a 32-­nanometer process, and thus are said to be at the 32-­nm node. To get a sense of how infini-­ 1. tin L liquid tin is boiled tesimal 32 nm is, consider that to span the width of the lowercase and dripped into a letter l on this page, you would need to bunch together more than vacuum chamber. 9500 32-­nm objects. Node in this context has historically been 2. laSeR a carbon dioxide used to refer to the size of the smallest parts of the transistors this releases laser, synchronized on the chips. Until the late 1990s, that was typically a feature to pulse in time 13.5-nm photons, with the falling of some of which called a gate. But there is a very fuzzy relationship between the the tin, vaporizes are picked off by technology node’s number and the actual dimensions of the each droplet. stray molecules gate it purports to signify. In fact, the International Technology in the vacuum. Roadmap for Semiconductors, the industry’s guide star, aban-­ doned the term in 2005, but its usage has persisted. In both logic and memory chips, each of the vast profusion of transistors acts like a switch that allows electrons to flow through the device. A metal-­oxide semiconductor field-­effect transistor (MOSFET), the kind found on virtually all chips, has three main parts: a source, a drain, and a gate. A voltage 4. SteeRing applied to that gate lets the electrons flow from source to drain. the mirror Physically, the gate sits between the source and the drain. channels the On a chip, that translates to the distance between the par-­ radiation into the EuV machine’s allel metal lines, called interconnects, that carry the electrons 3. ReFleCtoR optical system. through the chip. These interconnects are stacked today in the 13.5-nm photons are multiple levels, and as many as 10 can populate a chip (a cutting-­ captured by a edge chip could have 10 kilometers of interconnects). The dis-­ special spherical tance between these metal lines at the first level is called the reflector, but pitch, and logically, the half-­pitch is half that distance. because the mirror The half-­pitch of the metal lines on the first and densest does not completely surround the tin level is special, because that distance was what once defined droplets, and not only the half-­pitch but also the gate and, consequently, the because 13.5-nm node. But by 2000, it was a dicey relationship. The half-­pitch radiation is absorbed was becoming bigger than the node. by everything, more photons are lost. So, for example, in 2005 the gate width on an Intel micro-­ processor was 32 nm. The node was called “65 nm,” but the half-­ pitch for the first level of wires was 105 nm. Continued on page 50

5. FoCUS Pitch the optical system Half-pitch focuses the 13.5-nm beam. Contact

Gate 6. lithogRaPhy the 13.5-nm radiation reflected Drain Source off the mask is Channel scanned onto the photoresist, just as in regular the node’S dilemma: the half-pitch of the first wiring optical lithography, layer is the defining feature for memory chips, while to create the the gate length is the gauge for logic manufacturers. microchip pattern. Neither is entirely representative of the node.

28 Na • iEEE SpEctrum • april 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org MArch of the

A new generation of legged robots will navigate the world’s trickiest

zebra-tailed lizard­ ­ of terrain it may face in the des- its first outing across the glass stands on a bed of ert. In the lab, the bed of glass beads, SandBot dug holes fruit- tiny glass beads and beads stands in for desert sand, lessly with its crescent-shaped shifts its weight. The and by blowing air through it or feet and got stuck after just a beads slip underfoot, packing it down, we can make few steps. A and the mottled beige creature the ground looser or more solid. Sand, it turns out, is one of the stretches its spindly toes to get We then study how the lizard most difficult terrains for a robot a better purchase. Suddenly it copes with the changes. to conquer. Sand is slippery, for breaks into a run, blazing across Our interest isn’t purely one thing, and it is also inher- the granular surface with stu- biological. We—Goldman at ently unstable: Its properties pendous agility, its toes stretch- Georgia Tech, Koditschek and can easily flip between solid and ing out flat as they hit the beads, Komsuoglu at the University of fluid behavior in the course of a its feet whipping back and forth Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, single footstep. Physicists still in a blur. Each side of the lizard’s and our other collaborators— don’t have a complete picture of body stretches and then coils in are hoping that by studying the the mechanics of sand, which is turn as the reptile darts ahead at zebra-tailed lizard and a menag- why we’ve turned our attention several meters per second. erie of other desert-dwelling to the lizard and the clever strat- Scooped up a year ago in creatures, we can create more egies it has evolved to cope with California’s Mojave Desert and agile versions of our six-legged sandy terrain. For example, we transplanted to a lab at Georgia robot, SandBot. When tra- have noticed that the lizard’s Tech, the lizard holds our inter- versing solid ground, the robot long toes sink deep into the sand est because of its truly peculiar runs at a steady clip of two body at each step. It appears that this feet. Those long, bony toes allow lengths per second. (For compari- allows it to push off from sand the reptile to navigate over sand, son, a trotting dog covers four that’s deeper and more solid than rocks, and the many other types body lengths per second.) But on the less stable surface layer. The

30 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org terrain By Daniel Goldman, Haldun Komsuoglu & Daniel Koditschek

effect, preliminary evidence sug- kinds of tricky terrain, not just onsider how­ humans­ gests, is that the sinking enables on Earth but on the moon, Mars, transport themselves the lizard to run as if on hard and beyond. over land. In places ground, allowing it to maintain First, though, our machines where massive invest- speeds up to 75 percent of its pace need to conquer sand. Had we ments have been made on solid ground. Desert animals been designing a wing for fly- c in roads and tracks, it’s relatively deal with sand with different ing or a flipper for swimming, we simple to move about by car or train. levels of success, and their tech- would have been guided by the In fact, our vehicles require all of that niques provide valuable clues for well-established rules for fluid engineered smoothness—without it, refining SandBot. flow, the Navier-Stokes equa- they can’t go far. But much of the Ultimately, we would like to tions. But for a complex material Earth’s surface is largely inacces- build robots that can traverse any like sand, the equivalent models sible to vehicles, including robots. kind of terrain—bounding across do not yet exist. So we had to start About 30 percent of the land area is hard ground like a gazelle, scal- at the very beginning, by investi- desert, and one-fifth of that is cov- ing tall trees and buildings like gating the physical properties of ered by some kind of sand. a squirrel, or maneuvering over granular materials. After about Sand isn’t the only issue. slippery piles of leaves or mud two years of study and experi- Disaster sites and battlefields— like a snake. At least for short mentation, we in our small consor- precisely the places where mobile

all photos Bo all Yvonne : periods, a few robots already tium of physicists, roboticists, and robots are expected to be most have managed to scale vertical biologists think we have identified useful—are full of unpredictable, walls, leaf-covered slopes, and some basic rules describing move- impassable rubble. In 2001, for even ice. Eventually, highly ment across granular surfaces. example, robots were sent in after mobile robots could make a big Applying that knowledge to design- the World Trade Center towers difference in search-and-rescue ing sandworthy robots, though, is collapsed, but debris quickly Y d missions and could explore all not at all straightforward. clogged their tracks or caused

www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 31 the robots to flip over. Likewise, autonomous legged machine to machine, inspired in part by inte- when a coal mine collapsed in tackle the great outdoors. Moving grative biologist Robert Full, of the Sago, W.Va., in 2006, a rescue ponderously at a fraction of a body University of California, Berkeley, robot made it about 700 meters length per second, the robot care- has six legs that are attached past the mine’s entrance before fully placed each leg and then outside its center of mass. This getting stuck in mud. Even benign torqued its joints to generate the sprawled configuration grants the stuff like gravel and fallen leaves necessary ground-reaction forces robot greater stability as it bounces can stop a robot cold. to push its body forward. over natural terrain. Faster run- In short, robots that navigate The next phase in legged robots ners have since appeared, but on wheels and tracks are nearing was ushered in with the dynami- RHex remains, to our knowledge, their performance limits. Legged cally dexterous machines built by the only legged machine that can robots that mimic the movements Marc Raibert at Carnegie Mellon traverse rugged, broken ground of insects or animals offer a prom- University, in Pittsburgh, and rapidly—at or above the pace of ising alternative, but figuring out later at MIT. Dynamic dexterity one body length per second. the mechanics of walking hasn’t is the ability to exchange poten- RHex in turn became the been easy. Because not much tial energy and kinetic energy in model for a family of robots is known about how the forces a controlled manner—or the dif- whose appendages are each between a foot and the ground ference between a hopping kanga- driven by a motor located at the interact to create movement, the roo and a car. A kangaroo’s bent hip. Its progeny include, among prevailing method for designing legs store potential energy, which others, the Aqua robot, which these robots has been essentially allows it to bound effortlessly over is basically RHex with flippers trial and error: Build the machine obstacles. The ability to direct its for swimming; a two-armed, and hope for the best. body’s flow of mechanical energy wall-climbing robot named But we’ve come a long way. The is critical for a robot to navigate Dynoclimber; and SandBot. first computer-controlled legged unpredictable terrain. Raibert’s In early 2007, Komsuoglu robot dates back to the 1960s, creations were essentially self- designed and built SandBot in when Robert McGhee’s Phony excited pogo sticks that used less than a month, using the Pony took its first halting steps springs to balance, hop, and when RHex model and a modular infra- at the University of Southern yoked together, trot and bound. structure of his own creation regolith California, in Los Angeles. These robots still hold the ground [see “Seeing Inside SandBot”]. runner: McGhee then followed up on that speed record of 21 kilometers At 2 kilograms, it is less than a SandBot project at Ohio State University, per hour, but they were strictly quarter of the weight of RHex. trundles down a in Columbus, creating the first designed for controlled labora- Like RHex, SandBot has six com- track filled with poppy seeds, in autonomous legged robot in 1976. tory environments. pliant, independently controlled preparation for This machine, known as Hexapod, The RHex robot, designed by legs, each of which is a semi- the many kinds could make its way slowly across the roboticist Martin Buehler (then circular strip of plastic. Also like of dust, sand, some wooden blocks indoors. a professor at McGill University, in RHex, it walks with an “alter- and loose soil it A decade later, McGhee and his Montreal) and Koditschek’s group nating tripod” gait, inspired by will eventually encounter colleagues’ 5-meter-long Adaptive in 1999, took running robots to insects. The legs move in threes, outside the lab. Suspension Vehicle was the first the next level. This autonomous with the front and rear leg on one

32 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org Seeing Inside SandBot centrAl processor everal body parts interact to allow sandbot to the “brain” coordinates scurry over slippery grains. at the center is a computer the limb movements and that acts as the brain. in a typical jog, the legs support s listens for user commands. and propel the body by coordinating as two tripods—the two outer legs on one side and the middle leg on the opposite hip ActuAtor side. relative to the ground, sandbot bounces like a two- Each hip holds an 11-watt legged pogo stick; the robot’s legs, like those of a cockroach, motor, a microcontroller, are sprawled to give it more stability. and a switching power amplifier to regulate power delivery to the motor.

rigid plAstic shell

power MAnAgeMent Brushed dc BoArd A voltage regulator Network motor and other circuitry control interface the charge and discharge of lithium polymer batteries.

c-shAped leg With each step, three legs catch the body’s weight and flatten slightly before rounding out to push the robot forward. inside the hip A controller collects data Power from sensors amplifier that monitor leg position. the controller also translates high- side moving in sync with the mid- on high-level behavioral decision example, tell one of the micro- level commands dle leg on the opposite side. The making. Commands from the cen- controllers that its leg should from the central two tripods alternate supporting tral processor instruct the motor move at a particular speed start- processor into limb motion. and propelling the body, then cir- controllers to bring the legs to ing from a certain position. From cle around after each step. a desired position and speed. A then on, all tracking of that leg’s On the inside, SandBot is position-tracking controller deter- position is carried out by the composed of modular nodes that mines the discrepancy between a microcontroller, which can inter- communicate through a real-time leg’s actual state and the desired rogate its sensors at the much network called RiSEBus, inher- state. The controller then com- higher frequency of 1 kilohertz. ited from an early version of its putes the voltage needed to cor- This design allows the central climbing sibling. At the hip joint rect the error and applies it to processor to communicate with of each leg sits an 11-watt brushed the motor using a class-D power the legs using extremely compact dc motor driven by a custom- amplifier. This action gets the leg data packets that require minimal designed motor controller board into position at the right speed. computing power to decode. The with a quadrature encoder, which To economize on the robot’s separation of the control tasks senses the position of the motor’s computational power, the com- frees up the central processor to shaft and therefore the angu- puter issues commands at the perform longer-range planning. lar position of the leg. The six comparatively lazy rate of about The central processor might use jason lee jason motor controllers link to a cen- 100 times a second, which frees a camera to assess the difference tral computer, which functions up its cycles for other tasks. The between its relationship to a visual as SandBot’s brain and focuses central processor might, for landmark and what it ought to be

www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 33 old, the material will flow. But it can also suddenly solidify if the stress drops sufficiently. That can happen, for example, if the down- ward forces produced by the limb and the weight of the robot are bal- anced by the amount of pressure within the sand, which is a func- tion of its depth. Another facet is that the behav- ior of sand depends on what’s hap- pened to it in the past. A section of solid sand disturbed by a footstep may be more loosely packed when the next foot hits the material, for example. The forces generated by a foot stepping into these different conditions can vary dramatically— the penetration resistance varies by a factor of 1.6 between a tightly packed material and a loosely packed one. That complicates the task of predicting how far a limb will penetrate in different granular states. To learn how SandBot can best maneuver in sand, we have been subjecting it to a variety of precisely controlled granular environments. We control the environment using a 2.5-meter track built by Chen Li, a gradu- ate student in Goldman’s labora- tory in Atlanta. The track looks sort of like a long bathtub, and it’s filled with 90 kg of poppy seeds. There are tiny holes in leg envy: or investigate how treacherous a ent conditions have helped shape the bottom through which we A zebra-tailed surface is based on tactile feed- our theory of sand locomotion. can blow air, causing the poppy lizard and a ghost crab back it retrieves from sensors in We believe this project represents seeds to lift off and dance before hold many the legs. the first attempt to combine direct settling into a loosely packed secrets to fast measurements of a flowing physi- state. (Why poppy seeds and running—such andB ot ’s ­ de sign ­ cal substrate with observations of not actual sand? We’ve found as how much builds on experiments a runner’s impact on the ground that each seed is large enough to a limb flexes on sand. the in Goldman’s lab with and its body movements. Broadly keep us from worrying about it crab’s backpack real sand creatures. speaking, an animal’s weight, foot getting into the motors and yet wirelessly sends The zebra-tailed liz- shape, and gait all work together light enough to be lofted by our measurements S ard, for example, can maintain a to apply a specific amount of air puffs. From separate experi- of the strain exerted by high speed over sand of almost any stress to the sand. Under that ments, we know that the exact its legs. kind. The ghost crab, by contrast, model, the lizard is accessing material doesn’t matter, as long is less versatile; on packed ground, the solid features of sand rather as it is made up of granules.) its limbs and feet extend out from than slipping through the mate- With sand and other granu- its 4-centimeter shell, and it scut- rial and paddling, which is what lar media, we can describe the tles along at a rapid 1 meter per sec- the ghost crab ends up doing on “strength” of the ground in terms ond. But on looser soil the crab gets softer terrain. of its solid volume fraction— bogged down. The wind scorpion, Much can be learned even from that is, the fraction of the total for its part, can cover several body a single footstep. With each stride, volume occupied by the granules. lengths per second even on granu- the drag forces generated when a Typically, the solid volume fraction lar slopes, where every step could foot moves through sand can dis- falls between 58 and 64 percent trigger an avalanche. play both solid and fluid proper- for materials like sand or piles of Our observations of the lizard, ties. If the stresses generated by seeds. A lower fraction means that, crab, and scorpion under differ- the foot exceed a certain thresh- on average, there are fewer points

34 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org of contact between the grains and tionship between the volume sensing and control system for that the material is less solid. In fraction, the limb rotation fre- SandBot, to enable it to sense the our test track, an exact sequence quency, and the depth of the shifting terrain ahead and swiftly of hundreds of air pulses care- limb’s penetration at each step. adjust its gait to match. Sand isn’t fully packs the poppy seeds to the As both the model and empirical the only morphing environment desired volume fraction. evidence show, if we increase the that the robot could eventually Because RHex had been so suc- frequency with which the robot tackle: Mud and loose leaf litter cessful at walking on a variety of rotates its limbs, the robot sinks also display the solid and fluidiz- surfaces, we assumed that the further into the material and ing features of granular media. smaller but relatively more pow- the size of each step decreases, Indeed, with physics models erful SandBot would perform well triggering a catastrophic loss of built into their feet and brains, on sand. We were wrong. In an speed—quite the opposite of what robots should one day be able to early experiment, we packed the happens on hard ground. scramble across a rocky or sandy material to a solid volume fraction environment and learn, on their of 63 percent, placed SandBot on nother ­ improve- own, how to handle the changes the surface, and set the frequency ment ­ we’re working in terrain from footstep to foot- of the alternating tripod gait to on is building SandBot step. We can imagine thousands 5 revolutions per second. Earlier, a better foot, to give it of SandBots scouring the surface the robot had bounced flawlessly the ability to grip sand of another world, stepping from across hard ground using those A just as the zebra-tailed lizard does. a pile of rubble to a sandy patch same parameters. To that end, we’ve been measuring with ease. That’s still a big chal- This time, though, it got stuck the forces on the foot during impact lenge for today’s machines, but after just a few steps. Like a car’s with and penetration of materials it’s something even a hatchling sea tires spinning in mud, the robot’s of different volume fractions. The turtle can handle. Despite having rapidly rotating legs produced tests look deceptively simple: We appendages that are better suited absolutely no forward motion embed accelerometers into sim- for swimming, these remarkable on the poppy-seed-filled track. Discouraged, our first assump- tion was that SandBot was simply our observations of the lizard, the crab, too heavy to walk on sand and that and the scorpion have helped shape our we would need to completely rede- theory of sand locomotion sign the robot. But we decided to play around with it a bit more. Komsuoglu, con- ferring by phone from his office at ple disc-shaped objects and then animals must climb out of a deep Penn, suggested that we modify drop them on piles of sand. The hole in the ground, clamber over the gait slightly to make the legs results show that the forces pro- grass and debris, and move across swing faster in parts of the cycle duced when a foot hits the ground sand to reach the water, where and slower in others. He knew have different qualities in high- they will spend much of the rest from previous studies he’d done and low-volume-fraction materi- of their lives. that some robots perform better als. When the sample foot falls into We’re also looking below with such a varied gait, at least on a low-volume-fraction material, the ground for inspiration. Using high- hard surfaces. It seemed worth a force on it increases until the object speed X-rays, we are now study- shot. As Komsuoglu told us over comes to rest. When the object falls ing lizards called sandfish that the phone which values to change, into a closely packed material, the can burrow into sand in the blink we entered them into the control force decreases during penetration. of an eye and then “swim” through program and, like magic, the To also investigate the drag and lift the material underground. We’re robot started to move! The robot forces that arise during the other hoping these creatures will pro- was still cycling its legs five times parts of each step, we use a robotic vide clues as to how robots could per second, but now it was scur- arm to maneuver model feet and scramble through an unpredict- rying down the track at one body toes along granular paths. able disaster area after an earth- length per second. Further study To fully model the behavior quake or flood or dig down to showed that each limb penetrated of individual granules, we must detect land mines. With nature as the poppy seeds until it supported resort to simulation. Yang Ding, our guide, we expect that robots the robot’s weight, providing a graduate student of Goldman’s, will soon master some incredible enough stability for the machine has developed a computer sim- new abilities. o to thrust up and forward. ulation that models collisions of With Paul Umbanhowar, objects with sand, beads, and TO PROBE FURTHER a mechanical engineer at other granular media. We hope For more about SandBot Northwestern University, we that eventually these foot experi- and its robotic relatives, see subsequently developed a kine- ments and simulations will feed http://www.spectrum.ieee. matic model explaining the rela- into the development of a new org/apr09/moresandbot. www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 35 - The universal handseT -

Software-defined radio will let cellphones speak Wi-Fi, 3G, WiMax, and more

by peter koch & ramjee prasad

ime was when most radio sets had no soft‑ ware at all, and those that had any didn’t do much with it. But Joseph Mitola III, an engineer working for a company called E‑Systems (now part of Raytheon), envi‑ Tsioned something very different—a mostly digital radio that could be reconfigured in fundamental ways just by changing the code running on it. In a remarkably prescient article he wrote in 1992 for the IEEE National Telesystems Conference, he dubbed it software‑defined radio (SDR). A few short years later, Mitola’s vision became reality. The mid‑1990s saw the advent of military radio systems in which software controlled most of the sig‑ nal processing digitally, enabling one set of electronics to work on many different frequencies and commu‑ nications protocols. The first example was the U.S. military’s Speakeasy radio, which allowed units from different branches of the armed forces to communi‑ cate effectively for the first time. But the technology was costly and rather unwieldy—the first design took up racks that only a large vehicle could carry around. tavis coburn tavis

WWW.SpectruM.ieee.orG WWW.SpectruM.ieee.orG april 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum NA 37 the next year or so, you can expect to see people moth‑ balling their old cellphones in favor of new software‑ defined handsets. By 2015, the transition should be nearly complete.

The first software-enabled setsto crawl out of the primordial ooze of traditional analog radio were modest affairs [see “Evolutionary Developments”]. They used embedded computers only to change the output level of the RF amplifier or to shift between individual RF front ends so that one unit could cover multiple bands. In some of today’s radios, software—often with the aid of digital hardware accelerators—does far more: It determines everything that happens to the signal after it’s converted from RF to lower frequencies and before it’s put in a form that’s suitable for your ears. In these radios, only the RF front end and the amplifier that powers the speaker still use analog components. In the new millennium, SDR has spread The next era in SDR evolution will see what some from the battlefield to the commercial arena. call the ideal software radio or true software radio, in Wireless service providers, in particular, which the filtering and conversion from RF to lower frequencies that’s normally accomplished in the radio’s have begun using it in the transceivers in front end will be done digitally using the appropriate cellphone base stations, allowing the same software—a strategy that requires moving the analog‑ hardware to handle different cellular proto‑ to‑digital converter (ADC) much closer to the antenna. cols. Next, SDR will spread to sets that fit in These radios will still require a low‑noise RF amplifier, the palm of your hand. though, because it’s hard to imagine any ADC being That will come none too soon. Today’s able to pick up the micro‑ or even nanovolt signals gen‑ erated in the antenna. wireless mix is an often‑turbulent alpha‑ In the progression to that ideal radio, you’ll probably bet soup of communication schemes: notice that cellphones, mobile TV sets, GPS equipment, BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network), satellite phones, PDAs, digital music players, game con‑ BT (Bluetooth), DECT (Digital Enhanced soles, and their kin will begin to look less and less dis‑ Cordless Telecommunication), EDGE tinct. As with the beaks of the duck and the platypus, the evolution of such gadgetry will converge toward the (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), most functional form—in this case a small wireless unit GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), that allows its user always to stay connected, from any‑ GSM (Global System for Mobile commu‑ where and for any type of content or use. nication), IMT‑A (International Mobile Designing such universal gizmos will be tough, of Telecommunications–Advanced), UMTS course. Perhaps the highest hurdle will be engineer‑ (Universal Mobile Telecommunications ing the antenna, the size of which normally depends on the frequency of operation. Indeed, it’s very difficult to System), WiBro (Wireless Broadband), make a radio with an antenna that is not a significant Wi‑Fi, WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability fraction of a wavelength in size. This dictate of physics for Microwave Access), and more. A mobile introduces a fundamental problem, because you’d software radio that could communicate in all ideally like a single compact antenna to cover every‑ of these ways would, of course, be invaluable. thing from FM reception, at roughly 100 megahertz, to satellite‑ and personal‑network communications, Up until now, SDR technology worked which operate in the few‑gigahertz range. only in applications that didn’t need to be To cover such a large chunk of spectrum, you’d small in size or frugal in power consump‑ probably need a combination of something quite short, tion. New technology should, however, likely built into the unit’s printed‑circuit board, and overcome these constraints. Indeed, within something relatively long, such as the wire that con‑ nects with the user’s earphones. But even if the fre‑ quency span isn’t so great, designers probably won’t be satisfied with just one antenna: RF engineers are

38 NA • ieee SpectruM • April 2009 www.specTrum.ieee.org evolutionary quickly moving toward using multiple antennas, even for single‑frequency operation. This strategy—known developments as multiple‑input, multiple‑output, or MIMO—allows radio steps into the digital age for more reliable links and higher data rates. For example, IEEE 802.11n networking gear uses multi‑ - ple antennas to communicate at about five times the Hardware radio speed of previous versions of Wi‑Fi. Only modification through physical intervention You can understand how MIMO works, at least in broad terms, with a simple thought experiment. Suppose you set up a transmitter with a single antenna and then move a receiver, also with a single antenna, far enough away for the reception to fade in and out once in a while. Such problems arise because the transmit‑ Antenna ted signal takes multiple routes to the receiver—some of it perhaps bouncing off a passing car, other parts RF Intermediate Baseband Audio Sound reflecting off the steel beams of the building where front end frequency (IF) stage processor amplifier the receiver is located. When the difference in length between two paths is half a wavelength (or three halves, - or five halves, and so forth), the two waves will inter‑ software-controlled radio fere destructively, clobbering the signal. Computer selects circuitry to use MIMO sidesteps that pitfall by multiplying the number of possible paths between transmitter and receiver. If the signal passed from one transmitting antenna to one receiving antenna fades, the signal from a different pair should still come in loud and Antenna Power level clear, taking advantage of a phenomenon known to Digitally controlled switch radio designers as transmit diversity. Throw in some serious number crunching to RF IF front end stage process the digitized signals and you can achieve Baseband Bit-stream extraordinarily high data rates. Researchers at NTT processor processor DoCoMo, in Japan, which is developing such sys‑ tems for 4G mobile communications, have managed RF IF front end stage Data Voice 5 gigabits per second. And this wasn’t just in a con‑ trolled laboratory setting; they achieved this rate out‑ doors, albeit with the receiver moving no faster than - a swift walking pace (doing the same while travel‑ software-defined radio ing down the highway would be much more difficult). Software handles (de)modulation, frequency selection, security functions Impressive results with MIMO and other advanced antenna systems are also coming out of Stanford’s Information Systems Laboratory, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, and the Center for TeleInfrastructure at Aalborg University, in Denmark.

From top: rol From Another tricky issue for the makers of SDR hand‑ Antenna Software control sets is designing the transmitter’s power amplifier so that it can operate over a broad range of frequencies Data F RF IF Analog-to-digital Processing bodmer/iStockphoto; without mangling the signal. The challenge is not so front end stage converter (ADC) platform great for FM transmission, but for communication Voice schemes that require the amplitude of the wave to be manipulated, things can rapidly go awry. - Avoiding problems in such cases typically requires ideal software radio

t All but initial amplification is done in software ait ait some kind of feedback mechanism. You can, for exam‑ e lectronic ple, sample the output of the power amplifier and con‑ Antenna Full software programmability vert this RF signal to lower frequencies, which you

S can then compare with the signals used to modulate ; ; t en- Low-noise RF Reconfigurable Data the amplifier. You can then compensate for any error ADC t amplifier radio ec you find by digitally adding the reverse distortion to Voice

www.specTrum.ieee.org April 2009 • ieee SpectruM • NA 39 large sampling interval

the input signal. Among the leading manufacturers of such designs are RF Micro Devices, in Greensboro, N.C.; Acco Semiconductor, in Saint‑Germain‑en‑Laye, France; and Axiom MicroDevices, in Irvine, Calif. Another challenge for SDR designers is making much faster ADCs. To avoid “aliasing”—the effect that makes rapidly spinning wagon wheels in old Westerns look as though they’re turning slowly, or even back‑ ward—the ADC must sample the signal at a rate at least twice that of the highest‑frequency component, and this may be quite high. The upcoming 4G technologies, for example, are expected to operate in the vicinity of 3.5 gigahertz, which means you’d need to take 7 billion samples per second—more than 10 times as fast as what today’s best ADCs of sufficient resolution can manage. Many SDR researchers consider this to be among the toughest obstacles ahead—not only because they must up the sampling rate so much but also because they’ll simultaneously need to make significant improvements in the signal‑to‑noise ratio, power con‑ smaller sampling interval sumption, and physical size of this circuitry. Typically, you can better one of these parameters only by making trade‑offs with the others. So achieving gains on all fronts at once is going to be extremely difficult. There is, however, a strategy that might allow direct conversion of RF in the not‑so‑distant future: purposeful subsampling. The trick here is to arrange the sampling frequency of the ADC so that the inevi‑ table aliasing that occurs works to your advantage. In one step, the operation both digitizes the RF signal and converts it to a lower frequency. This may seem a bit magical, but it’s not so hard to understand. Just imagine the RF signal as one of those rapidly spinning wagon wheels. Adjust the frame rate of the motion‑ picture camera appropriately and your captured version of this wheel will turn at whatever lower fre‑ quency you want [see “Aliasing Harnessed”].

Astute readers might notice that the difficulties we’ve outlined so far all involve hardware. Software‑ defined handsets will have some challenging soft‑ ware, too. It’ll manage the modulation, demodulation, encoding, decoding, encryption, and decryption, as aliasing Harnessed well as the packing and unpacking of the data needed Subsampling can work to your advantage for the communications protocol employed—all com‑ putationally intensive tasks. What’s the best kind of if the rf signal [white] is not sampled at least twice per cycle, microprocessor for such heavy lifting? aliasing will occur. But by properly adjusting the sampling Most SDR designers struggling with that question interval [indicated by vertical lines], you can down-convert the rf to whatever lower frequency is desired [blue and yellow].. instinctively fixate on the MIPS rate—how many mil‑ lion instructions per second the processor can exe‑ cute. That’s because it must carry out a huge number of arithmetic operations—largely multiplications and additions—to massage the digitized signal. Specialized tions than of “if‑then‑else” statements. Those branching digital signal processors (DSPs) are usually the best operations are better done by a general‑purpose proces‑ chips for such things, but they may not be the only sor, which would normally also be assigned the tasks solution for SDR handsets. The reason is that these of running the unit’s real‑time operating system, key‑ radios must do other kinds of signal processing, too. board, and display. So a software‑defined handset will In particular, SDR handsets need to detect and cor‑ need to have such a chip around anyway. rect errors in the received digital bit stream, and the algo‑ A general‑purpose processor will also be required rithms for that consist less of multiplications and addi‑ to host the software interfaces that connect different

40 NA • ieee SpectruM • April 2009 www.specTrum.ieee.org applications with the underlying hardware. In the mobile services may be safety critical, so a tiny slip‑up near term at least, that “middleware” is likely to con‑ could be a literal killer, too. form to the rules laid out in the U.S. military’s Software One way to address this uncertainty is to go a step Communications Architecture, an object‑oriented com‑ further than simulation: You can prototype the digital puting framework that has become the de facto stan‑ portion of your newly designed SDR system using one dard for software radios intended for combat use. or more field‑programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), inte‑ grated circuits that contain a vast number of logic blocks Designers of future SDR handsets will revel in the and potential interconnections. These devices can be flexibility afforded by having the software control so configured after their manufacture to serve almost any much of the signal processing. And designers will no purpose, constituting entire systems on a chip. doubt want as much of the set’s hardware as possible The problem with FPGAs for production is that to be reconfigurable—that is, they’ll want software to they are the energy hogs of the semiconductor world, do not only signal processing but also be able to switch lacking the power‑management features of their hard‑ between different antennas and RF front ends. Such wired counterparts. Moreover, FPGAs suffer from capability would allow you to turn a cellphone into a the integrated‑circuit equivalent of suburban sprawl, satellite‑radio receiver, say, at the touch of a button. taking up a relatively large area on a silicon wafer. While the technology for accomplishing this has They are also expensive, which helps to explain why been around for years, until now it’s been too bulky and we haven’t seen FPGAs being used to manufacture power hungry to be used in handsets. But consumers SDR handsets—at least not yet. A few researchers are are now on the verge of enjoying the fruits of this exploring low‑power FPGA technologies, so it’s not approach, implemented with modest amounts of power out of the question that they could one day serve for and in very small packages. In February 2008, BitWave high‑volume production of handsets. Semiconductor, of Lowell, Mass., announced its In the meantime, FPGAs remain a convenient way BW 1102 Softransceiver RFIC, a chip intended to bring to build and test SDR prototypes. Among the most SDR to both cellphones and femtocells (small wireless interesting examples of this is the Berkeley Emulation base stations that can be set up in a home or business Engine 2 (BEE2) project at the University of California, to improve cellular coverage indoors). The BW 1102 is a Berkeley. This test‑bed setup consists of five high‑ single complementary metal‑oxide‑semiconductor inte‑ performance FPGAs, which with proper program‑ grated circuit containing a transceiver that supports a ming can be turned into various next‑generation SDR variety of wireless protocols and can operate anywhere systems. Another example of this approach is the on the spectrum from 700 MHz to 3.8 GHz. SDR‑based design effort at San Diego State University, Suppose, however, that you are a radio designer and which became widely known through a 2007 article in want more than BitWave’s chip can handle, such as DSP Magazine titled “How to Pack a Room of Analog FM the ability to receive FM broadcasts—and maybe even Modulators Into a Xilinx FPGA.” transmit on FM, too, so that you can play your favorite MP3 files on your car radio. How hard would it be to cre‑ No doubt, many people are waiting for the day ate the perfect IC for that? Hard indeed, it turns out, and when they’ll carry just one handheld gadget they can that’s why BitWave still has essentially no competitors. instantly switch from cellphone mode to that of a satel‑ But let’s say you’re keen to try. You might start by lite radio receiver, or from a wireless Web browser to a estimating the allowable execution time for each of the mobile TV set; indeed, their handset might carry out all radio’s intended functions and its power consumption, of these functions at once. Others, including the world’s physical size, and other properties, including the fre‑ many technophobes, might be less enthusiastic about quency bands to be covered. Based on that assessment, such a prospect. But SDR technology offers something you’d decide how to divide the overall system into hard‑ for them, too—the possibility that their wireless equip‑ ware and software. Although this exercise isn’t trivial, ment will eventually become smart enough to adapt to tools for hardware‑software codesign are available. its communications environment all by itself. Now comes the more difficult job: You’ve got to come A radio intelligent enough to reconfigure itself— up with detailed designs for each piece. Fortunately, you perhaps by detecting free spectrum and switching its won’t have to do that from scratch. Suitable designs for frequency of operation to claim it—would make wire‑ at least some of the larger building blocks—a DSP here, less services cheaper and more reliable for their users, a general‑purpose processor there—should be possible most of whom will not even be aware that such mar‑ to find and license. After the hardware has been pinned velous things are going on under the hood. As with down, you’ll need to pull together the software to run it, SDR, this is a concept that Mitola promoted early on, which itself should keep you and your team busy for a in a 1999 article he wrote with Gerald Maguire Jr., of large number of programmer‑years. the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm. They The next challenge is to verify that your radio called it cognitive radio. works correctly. Unfortunately, even state‑of‑the‑art Ah, to have a radio that not only switches function simulation tools aren’t guaranteed to show system per‑ on demand but also configures itself into the most formance properly—and subtle errors here might be effective form possible without its user even know‑ lethal for your product. Worse, many of the expected ing it. Now that will be a truly universal handset. o

www.specTrum.ieee.org April 2009 • ieee SpectruM • NA 41 carmageddon

If necessIty really Is the mother of InventIon, then surely the auto industry is on the verge of an era of blinding brilliance. Times are that bad. In July, when the price of a barrel of oil shot up to US $147, buyers in the United States dumped their gas guzzlers and lined up for that iconic hybrid, the Toyota Prius. And, aston- ishingly, by year’s end they had bought 25 000 Smart ForTwo cars, two-seaters so small they make the Mini Cooper, with top 10 its lavish complement of four seats, look like a land yacht. Then, just six months later, oil prices dropped back down, hitting a low of $37 a barrel. Good for drivers, bad for automakers: Such seesawing makes it impossible for them to plan—as they must—what cars they will be selling tech in three to five years. Then came the capper to that grisly year—the financial meltdown and the ensuing worldwide recession. It humbled what was left of America’s Detroit Three (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, which barely counts as a bona fide automaker anymore). It even gave cturers mighty Toyota its first operating loss in 70 years. Auto A nuf

cars A writers fretted about “carmageddon” and, more linguis- electric-drive cars take tically vexing, heralded “the carpocalypse.” By the end of the year, the world’s auto manufacturers had just a single rovided by m

second place to sheer survival P imperative: survival. by john voelcker Consolidation is in the air. Soon there will be fewer car

companies, and they will be making fewer kinds of cars. All Photos

42 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org (p. 45) mercedes-benz concept bluezero

bmw mini e (p. 44)

(p. 47) 2010 ford fusion hybrid (p. 47) 2010 toyota prius

For a glimpse of the future, look at and electric-drive vehicles are about to car navigation systems in real time. Volkswagen. It builds more than a dozen roll off assembly lines. Here’s the com- Digital entertainment also keeps get- separate models, totaling well over 1 mil- plete list of major world automakers ting better. This summer, the Mercedes- lion units a year, on the basic components that aren’t experimenting with batteries Benz S-Class sedan will offer an in-dash of its Golf/Jetta/Rabbit line. They are sold and electric motors: Mazda. Even the video screen that filters light onto adja- as Volkswagens, Škodas, even Audis. Germans have begun supplementing cent pixels to display different images For another view of the future, look their beloved high-performance diesels to different viewers. The driver can see at upstart Chinese automaker BYD with a handful of electric cars. routing maps, for instance, while the Automotive, in Shenzhen. Owned by Europe’s diesel diehards, meanwhile, passenger happily watches a movie. a huge battery-cell manufacturer, it despair that their hard-won improve- But most of these goodies seem to began making cars only five years ago, ments in fuel usage have been under- come from a time that suddenly seems yet in December it stunned observers mined by the surge in diesel fuel prices very distant, the time before the melt- by launching the world’s first produc- in the United States. And in more bad downs of the automotive industry and tion plug-in hybrid (see the 2009 BYD news for diesels, the Chinese govern- the world economy. Just as contractors F3DM). Early reviewers called the car ment appears to have shifted its devel- will stop building McMansions and crude. But the Model T was crude, too. opment priority from diesel to electric investment advisers will stop pushing And by getting a plug-in hybrid to mar- drive. Meanwhile, researchers all over mortgage-backed securities, so auto- ket before the end of the calendar year, the world are creating elaborate models makers may have to rethink personal BYD beat Toyota and GM, both of which to test whether running vehicles on grid transportation. are also working on plug-in hybrids, by power can really cut greenhouse-gas Usually the hottest new car tech- almost two years. emissions overall. (The answer is usu- nology tells us quite a lot about what to If oil prices stay low, it may dampen ally yes, depending on how “clean” the expect from the industry, but today that consumers’ interest in the next big thing: local generating mix is.) rule may not apply. Desperate times call electric-drive cars. Big financial incen- In the passenger compartment, tech- for radical changes, and that means that tives from federal and state governments nology continues to advance smartly. even today’s most outrageous concept could speed things along, but those gov- Telematics—the delivery of data by cell- cars may seem strangely outmoded and ernments are now struggling themselves. phone technology—is pumping traffic, quaint in a few years’ time—just as elec- Nevertheless, lots more partially electric weather, and gas-price information into tric cars did in the 1920s. o

www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 43 n 240-km range 0 to 100 km/h in 8.5 seconds CONCEPT: mInI e

the mini E stole the limelightfirst atlook the los Angeles Auto Show in November 2008, including photo ops with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

P oWer 150-kW (201train hp) electric motor, regions powered by 35 the On -kWh lithium-ion u.S. coasts battery pack, drives only, because the front wheels that’s where the media are

almost alone among major automakers, Longtime electric-drive pioneer AC BMW had long lacked experience with Propulsion, of San Dimas, Calif., developed electric drive. Then, last fall, the company the battery pack, electric motor, and power unveiled its Mini E, an electric conversion electronics, as well as the wall charger. To W of BMW’s popular Mini Cooper hatchback. make a production run of 500 cars possi- Bm When the company announced a beta test of ble, AC suspended all other work for several Up 500 units, thousands of drivers applied to months and set up a global supply chain to catches lease one, at a whopping US $850 a month ship electric motors from the United States electrIc (close to twice the cost of leasing a BMW and batteries and electronics from Asia to a on 5-series car). BMW manufacturing facility in Munich. —In a Among other requirements, winners Arriving simultaneously at the facility cars had to agree to keep the car in a garage, in were Mini “gliders,” completed cars minus Urry which BMW would install a wall-mounted their engines and transmissions. BMW h 240-volt charging unit. The battery pack workers assembled the components and bmw mini e model: n.y., n.j. goes where the rear seat would normally tested the cars, the last of which was fin- avaIlaBIlIty: calif., april 2009 be, meaning that the Mini E is a two- ished in November. release (B eta): seater. The 35-kilowatt-hour battery links The car was instantly booked for test together 5088 small off-the-shelf lithium- drives after its debut amid a crush of cam- ion batteries (an approach similar to that eras at last fall’s Los Angeles Auto Show— used in the all-electric Tesla Roadster). leaving dozens of disappointed journalists A 150-kilowatt (201 horsepower) elec- (including this one) out in the cold. Still, if tric motor drives the front wheels through BMW wants to get serious about electric a single-speed gearbox, replacing the cars, it will have to develop its own battery- standard Mini’s engine and transmis- management technology, negotiate with a sion. BMW quotes an acceleration time of myriad of new suppliers—and then ensure charge it: the driver plugs the car 8.5 seconds from 0 to 100 kilometers per that it can produce and sell electric cars into a box that hangs on the garage hour (62 miles per hour). That’s respect- that maintain its traditional profit margins. wall and provides enough amperage to recharge the batteries in just 2.5 hours. able enough to support the Mini’s sports- That may prove to be harder than making a car image. media splash with a limited-run car. o

44 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org ranges: 200 km (battery), 600 km (electric + diesel), 400 km (fuel cell) CONCEPT: BlU co2 ezero claimed missions e cell 32 g/km (E-

plus in blended Plants mode) oWer P lithium- 70-kW (94 hp) continuous electric cell); motor, powered by 35-kWh ion battery pack (E- 17.5-kWh lithium-ion battery-kW cylinder pack, rechargedl three by- 50 (67 hp) 1- -kW turbodiesel enginelus); or 80 (E-cell p (107 hp) continuous hydrogen fuel cell (F-cell)

more

the concept BlueZero is widely thought to preview the class, a compact five- next B- mercedes- seat hatchback Benz line notthe presently united soldStates. in

fuel efficiencycell plus 4.5 l/100 km (E- in range-extending mode)

mercedes-benz likes to keep up with alternative propulsion technologies, and it’s offering no less than three of them in its latest Concept BlueZero: battery electric (the E-Cell), extended-range electric (the aqUadynam E-Cell Plus), and fuel cell (the F-Cell). Ic stylIng The designers were able to fit this wide vari- hIdes mUlt ety of power trains into a car just 422 centimeters Iple long (barely 14 feet) thanks to a sandwich-like floor: poWer-tra Passengers sit above a flat chamber between the axles In opt model: mercedes-benz concept bluezero Ions that can contain a tank for liquid fuel, a battery pack, avaIlaBIlIty: auto shows globally or a fuel cell and its accompanying hydrogen cylin- release: concept only ders. A 70-kilowatt (94 horsepower) electric motor drives the front wheels, regardless of the energy source powering the car. In the E-Cell, the lithium-ion battery pack stores biological models for vehicle shapes, and that trend 35 kilowatt-hours, twice as much as the smaller packs is likely to continue, says Klaus Frenzel, manager of in the other two variants. In the E-Cell Plus, the space advanced design concepts at Daimler. The BlueZero’s saved by using a smaller battery helps to accommo- front and rear lights are, respectively, white and red date a range-extending engine, which sits under the C-shaped sweeps of light-emitting diodes. Its trans- rear seat. lucent roof panel is coated with thin-film solar cells, Equally extreme is the styling, which draws heav- although they seem to have been put there largely for ily on the Bionic Car concept of 2005—known infor- effect, because their power output is sufficient only to mally as the boxfish, orkofferfisch in German. With a bio motif: the recharge a mobile phone. rigid exoskeleton and very low aquadynamic resis- sea-green cabin Daimler says the BlueZero’s family of modular tance, the fish offered a model for designers to explore and smoothly electric-drive components will be used in production radical reductions in drag. The Bionic Car’s coeffi- contoured vehicles this year and will be followed by low num- shapes cient of drag was a radically low 0.19. The full-size bers of pure-battery vehicles next year. So if fish are emphasize the Concept F700 [see “Top 10 Tech Cars,” IEEE Spectrum, design’s marine the main inspiration, you might wonder: Will an elec- November 2008] was the next Mercedes to explore inspirations. tric eel be next? o

www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 45 us $21 990 n only vw sells mass-market diesels in u.s. fIrst electrIc PrOduCTiON: jetta car sold

the same more By a major fuel efficiency offered in the JettatD Sportwagen. (ePa official estimate) i engine is also in the past VW has offered carmaker 8.1 l/100 km (29 mpg) city, PoWer 5.9 l diesels in the Golf, the P /100 km (40 mpg) lant and the new Beetle asr abbit,well. sInce the ev1 2.0-l, 104-kW highway (140 hp) four-cylinder model: mitsubishi i-miev turbocharged avaIlaBIlIty: japan, uk direct-injection release: Q4 2009 diesel pure electric vehicles make sense in japan more than anywhere else because so many commuters there go short distances in small cars and in stop-and-go traffic. so a lot of people will be following the progress of mitsubishi motors’ i-miev electric minicar, which will go on sale to retail customers in japan by the fourth quarter of 2009 at the latest. did we say small? the i-miev is adapted from a kei car, a class limited to 3.4 meters in length, 2 meters in height, 1.5 meters in width, 0.66 liter in engine size, and 47 kilowatts in power (63 horsepower). Tier 2, Bin 5—temporarily halted the sale of the 330-volt, 16-kilowatt- diesel vehicles there after 2006. hour lithium-ion battery pack Now a few diesels have returned, but was developed by mitsubishi and vW proves only Volkswagen offers them in mass- gs yuasa corp., the only mass market vehicles. The 2009 Jetta TDI, which producer of large-format lithium- clean dIesel went on sale in September 2008, carries the ion batteries in japan. the 47-kW banner. At US $21 990, it costs about $4500 motor generates 180 newton meters can Be more than the gasoline model. VW’s own of torque, enough to go from 0 to Ble fuel-efficiency tests indicate that fuel econ- 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles afforda omy would, in practice, be 6.2 liters per per hour) in 13 seconds; the claimed

model: 2009 volkswagen jetta tdi 100 kilometers (38 miles per gallon) in the top speed is 130 km/h (80 mph). orth america, europe avaIlaBIlIty: n city and 5.3 L/100 km (44 mpg) on the high- there are three driving modes: release: now way, which are considerably better than the standard, eco, and “B.” the eco U.S. EPA’s official estimates. mode, in comparison with standard, for once, last year’s “Green Car of the The Jetta has curbed emissions by replac- limits the motor’s output to just Year” wasn’t a hybrid, a pure electric car, ing the previous mechanical fuel-injection 18 kW, stretching the range of a or a fuel-cell vehicle. It was simply a diesel, system with a new device that uses piezo- single charge. range varies with employing Rudolf Diesel’s century-old idea electric crystals, which vibrate in response usage and driving style, of course. of using high compression alone to ignite to electric signals, to better atomize the the B mode adds more regenerative fuel mixed with air. And that diesel was fit- fuel and inject it at higher pressures. The braking on downhill stretches and ted to a modestly priced compact sedan, no exhaust passes through a storage cata- when the car is coasting, to recharge less. Could it be anything other than the lat- lyst, which temporarily holds the nitrogen the pack more aggressively. o est incarnation of the beloved Volkswagen oxides, while a filter holds soot and other Jetta TDI? particulates—until the engine control soft- Like most European carmakers, ware can switch modes to burn the waste Volkswagen sells huge numbers of diesels products off in a later combustion cycle. in its home markets. Diesel fuel in much Whether Diesel’s invention becomes of Europe is less aggressively taxed than more than an oddity in the U.S. market gasoline, in part because it delivers greater depends largely on oil prices and the prod- efficiency. But it has been a challenge to get uct mix coming out of refineries. More those engines, with their relatively high diesel fuel, at a cheaper price, will mean emissions of particulate matter and nitro- more diesel cars. Still, the Europeans are far enough: mitsubishi says gen oxides, to comply with U.S. emissions a lot less confident than they were just a the i-mieV can go 160 kilometers laws. In California, the toughest state of year ago that diesels are the best answer to on a standard Japanese road and them all, the current standard—known as U.S. regulations. o 120 km on a standard u.s. road.

46 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org highest electric speed: 75 km/h (47 mph) n 1100-km range (city) PrOduCTiON: after the well-received Escape fUsIon Hybrid launched in late 2004, Ford’s hybrid program seemed to stall. The company regu- larly updated the small sport utility and claimed lant Wer P l added hybrid versions of its Mercury and fuel efficiency Po 5.7 l/100 km (41 mpg) city, 116-kW (155 hp) 2.5- /100 km (36 mpg) highway Mazda platform mates. But it couldn’t raise 6.5 l Atkinson cycle engine; combined sales beyond a modest 25 000 or 79-kW (106 hp) motor so per year—and no new hybrids appeared over the next four years. Now Ford has unveiled a hybrid ver- sion of its Fusion midsize sedan. It is pitted directly against Toyota’s popular Camry Hybrid, also a hybrid adaptation of an existing gasoline-engine car. And in test- ing by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Fusion Hybrid handily beat the 2009 Camry Hybrid by several miles more per gallon. The Fusion Hybrid is the first vehicle the Fusion Hybrid’s near twin, the milan Hybrid, uses identical to use Ford’s second-generation hybrid mercury mercury brand system. It uses a 1.3-kilowatt-hour nickel- running gear with different styling and interior—but will the metal-hydride battery with 20 percent more survive the industry meltdown? power than the Escape’s in a package that’s 30 percent smaller, meaning that the Fusion tive brakes scavenges up to 94 percent of the Hybrid sacrifices little of the trunk space braking energy and feeds it to the battery. available in the standard version. The result is an impressively high speed Ford engineer Gil Portalatin said that for operation under electric power alone: ford’s improvements in control logic allowed the 75 kilometers per hour (47 miles per hour). It design team to be very aggressive in deter- also allows up to 3 km of continuous electric- latest mining when the load is light enough to only driving and a range of 1100 km of justify shutting off the gas and letting the around-town driving on a tank of gasoline. troUnces electric motor propel the car all by itself. The Fusion also offers Ford’s popular Such shutoffs happen about twice as often Sync, a voice-activated digital entertain- toyota on as in the early-model Escape. ment and mobile phone system; real-time The new system adds a variable-voltage traffic and weather data delivered through mIleage controller that can boost the voltage to the the satellite radio; and a system that uses model: 2010 ford fusion hybrid battery, letting the traction motor and gener- radar sensors in the rear quarter panels to avaIlaBIlIty: north america r ator increase the battery recharge rate while detect other vehicles in the car’s blind spots elease: now operating at their most efficient speeds. In and alert drivers to crossing traffic when addition, new control logic for the regenera- backing out of a parking space. o qUIntessentIal hyBrId gets makeover model: 2010 toyota prius release: june 2009 (north america) the prius has become the definitive on the combined U.s. urban and but sometimes image of the hybrid-electric highway cycle, against the previous that’s enough vehicle, with more than 1 million 5.1 l/100 km (46 mpg). this is (indeed, this is sold in 44 countries. toyota now the first enginet oyota has ever jocularly known has a new version of the car, and it designed that has no mechanically as the cheating- hopes to sell 180 000 units in the powered accessory drives: husband button, eco symbol: the new prius is the third first full year in the Uniteds tates. water pumps, air-conditioning for those who generation of the world’s most popular hybrid the new prius improves incre- compressors, and the like. all of may use it to and the shining green symbol of toyota itself. mentally on the 2004–2009 them run off the car’s electrical sys- slink home in version. It is more spacious, tem, to cut down on parasitic losses. the wee hours without waking acceleration than standard. somewhat more luxurious, and the new prius offers three their families). the eco mode still, prius buyers await the has a larger engine (1.8 liters driving modes. the ev-drive cuts performance for better plug-in version, fitted with a larger versus 1.5), yet consumes mode propels the prius at low fuel economy, while the power battery pack containing lithium-ion slightly less fuel: 4.7 liters per speeds on battery power alone. It mode gives quicker throttle cells. the company has promised to 100 kilometers (50 miles per gallon) can go up only to 1.6 km this way, response and more aggressive offer the car within 18 months. o www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 47 us $21 700 n hopes to enter europe by 2010, u.s. by 2011 iON: f3dm PrOduCT best-selling cars. BYD says it hopes ulti- last September, morefabled mately to sell 2000 F3DMs a month. investor Warren Buffett pur The battery pack contains 100 of BYD’s claimed fuel chased a 10 percent stake in PoWer efficiency - own 3.3-volt lithium-ion cells, which are 50-kW (67P hp)lant 1.0- BYD co. for 4.0 l/100 km uS $230 million. based on iron phosphate. That chemistry three-cylinder engine;l 75-kW electric motor has less energy than the cobalt alternative, driven by 15.6-kWh but it’s far less prone to internal short cir- battery pack cuits of the sort that have famously caused laptops to burst into flames. Unlike any other hybrid around, the F3DM has three distinct modes of operation: all-electric; series hybrid, which uses the engine to recharge the battery; and parallel hybrid, in which the gasoline engine drives the vehicle directly, with assistance from the electric motor. Local journalists who tested the F3DM claimed range 100 km on full battery say that the transition between the three charge plus 480 km modes is rough, that the power steering on gasoline vibrates, and that battery recharging is accompanied by a roar. On the other hand, journalists say the car accelerates very well while general motors constantly hypes under electric power. its plans to sell the Chevrolet Volt extended- A year ago, BYD Automotive showed range electric car late next year, a Chinese the F6DM—a larger midsize plug-in hybrid orld’s battery company has quietly beaten GM to sedan—at the Detroit auto show, quoting W the punch. In December, BYD Automotive, a 97-kilometer (60-mile) electric range. fIrst of Shenzhen, started selling the F3DM, the The company hopes to sell cars in Europe Ion world’s first mass-produced plug-in hybrid- by 2010, says BYD board member Tony prodUct electric vehicle. Mampilly, and in the United States by 2011. The compact sedan will be limited to Well...within two to four years, says Micheal plUg-In China, however, until it can meet Western Austin, of BYD America. Id countries’ standards for safety and com- But thus far, no Chinese carmaker has hyBr fort. The company is selling the F3DM (for a firm date for U.S. sales. Industry experts

2009 byd f3dm “dual mode”) to government fleets and will dismiss or laugh at the idea of U.S. sales in model: avaIlaBIlIty: china offer it to consumers this summer. It goes for the near term. Chinese makers will need Q3 2009 release: roughly 150 000 yuan (US $21 700)—a little years of experience elsewhere, says Aaron more than half the 280 000-yuan cost of a Bragman of the analyst firm IHS Global Toyota Prius but more than twice the price Insight, before they can meet stringent U.S. of the gasoline-powered F3, one of China’s crash safety and emissions standards. o

the same space that had previously World’s fIrst hyBrId WIth lIthIUm-Ion Battery housed the car’s standard lead-acid 12-volt starter battery. model: 2009 mercedes-benz s400 bluehybrid avaIlaBIlIty: europe, north america the 3.5-liter v6 engine has the european love affair with introducing their first hybrids. and assists with initial torque to been converted to operate on diesel engines can be summed so here comes the new move the car away from a stop. the atkinson (or five-stroke) up succinctly: fuel that costs mercedes-Benz s400 Bluehybrid the battery is the first in any cycle, the standard for hybrid only about €1 per liter. But now, (in mercedes-speak, “blue” means production hybrid to be based systems. In an atkinson engine, worried about pursuing the wrong “green”), on sale in europe and on lithium-ion technology. the the piston moves through strokes track, european carmakers are planned for the United states cells, built in france by johnson of different lengths so that the as a 2010 model. a controls–saft, together can combusting fuel-air mixture 15-kilowatt (20 horse- store 0.7 kilowatt-hours. Because expands to a greater volume on power) electric lithium-ion cells pack about the power stroke than it occupies motor contributes twice as much energy into a given on the intake stroke. the result is oomph when needed, volume as nickel-metal hydride, greater efficiency. the drawback— restarts the engine, mercedes was able to fit them into low torque at low engine speeds— doesn’t matter in a hybrid, which at last, lithium: the s400 BlueHybrid, the first production hybrid fitted with a lithium-ion battery, cools can use the electric motor to the battery pack with the car’s air-conditioning system. augment low-end torque. o

48 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org us $20 500 n speedometer displays efficiency the fIrst car PrOduCTiON that avoIds : InsIght rear-enders Wer Plant Po l four- model: 2010 volvo xc60 73-kW (98 hp) 1.3- more insight, avaIlaBIlIty: global cylinder engine; 10-kW the original Honda release: now (13 hp) electric motor a teardrop-shaped two- volvo, which has long emphasized seater, delivered real- world fuel economy near safety, is going beyond anything 3.4 l/100 km (70 mpg), but the company sold it’s done before with a system only 18 000 from that in some cases substitutes 1999 to 2006. its own judgment for that of the driver. the new Xc60 can slow down and stop automatically, to avert or mitigate a low-speed collision with the car in front. an infrared laser sensor behind the windshield feeds data to a pro- cessor that figures out how far ahead claimed fuel efficiency the next car is and how fast it’s going. 5.9 l/100 km that way, the system can calculate (40 mpg) city, l/100 km the braking force necessary to stop 5.5 mpg) highway before hitting that vehicle. If the sys- (43 tem notices that the car is closing in on the car in front, it warns the driver by flashing a red light at the base of the windshield and sounding an alarm. for 45 years, Honda has offered small, If the driver fails to react in time, cleverly engineered cars, which for the past mInI the system applies the brakes auto- 15 years have achieved the highest average mal hyBrId, matically. the system brakes hard, fuel economy in the United States. But while maXImal pay and only at the last minute, to keep it debuted its first hybrid in 1999—the short- Back drivers from relying on it in traffic. lived Insight—Honda never had a breakout model: 2010 honda insight

an adaptive cruise control, like Toyota’s Prius. avaIlaBIlIty: global release: now incorporating radar, lets the driver Now the company has launched its first program the car to maintain a certain four-seater designed, like the Prius, as a distance from the vehicle up ahead. hybrid from the ground up. The vehicle, for which prices had not been announced another system warns against an for which Honda resurrected the Insight at press time. impending collision while putting name, incrementally improves Honda’s Under the Insight’s hood is a 1.3-liter a little tension on the disc-brake “mild hybrid” approach, which incorporates four-cylinder engine producing 73 kilowatts calipers so they’ll take effect faster a relatively small electric motor and uses it (98 horsepower). The heart of the hybrid when the driver makes a panic stop. less frequently than do typical (or “full”) system is a lightweight, ultrathin electric such features can be viewed hybrids. The Prius, for example, can go motor between the engine and transmission. as first steps toward vehicles that 1 to 2 kilometers on electricity alone, under It puts out just 10 kW (13 hp) and is powered drive themselves. perhaps one day, some circumstances; the Insight can’t. by a flat nickel-metal-hydride battery pack when a driver wants to fool with Honda’s formula combines a small under the rear deck that holds 0.58 kilowatt- the navigation system, a patient internal combustion engine—which shuts hour of energy (not quite half the 1.3 kWh of spouse will smile sweetly and say, off when the car comes to a stop—with the the Toyota Prius pack). Honda claims the “oh, honey, just let the car drive.” o smallest battery-and-motor combination Insight’s system is 19 percent smaller and capable of moving the car from a resting 28 percent lighter than the previous gener- state while the engine takes a second or two ation used in its Civic Hybrid. The Insight’s to restart itself. Of course, the motor assists motor can, by itself, occasionally power the the engine under heavy loads, too—half car at urban speeds, though only if the con- the point of a hybrid system is to exploit a ditions are just right. motor’s ability to provide full torque from A system Honda calls EcoAssist accu- the moment it switches on. mulates data on your driving style, so you This “mild” strategy costs much less to can delve into your history to improve your implement than the full-hybrid setup, let- mileage. Drivers can further enhance their ting Honda call the Insight “the lowest- fuel economy by selecting Econ mode, which Watch their back: Volvo’s citysafety braking system uses priced hybrid offered in the United States.” It sets the control logic so that the car acceler- laser sensors to keep a safe is priced at US $20 500, compared to a likely ates more slowly and backs off the gasoline distance from the car ahead. $25 000 or more for the 2010 Toyota Prius, engine more quickly. o www.spectrum.ieee.org April 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 49 Confused yet? Massachusetts Institute of Technology Shrinking The trouble with the ter-­ minology started in the early Put MIt to Work For You Possibilities 1990s, when these gate widths Continued from page 28 fell down a steep slope [see table, “Pitch Counts”]. For logic 2009 Summer CourSeS devices, the gate length became the smallest feature, but for mem-­ in biotechnology, computing, networks, mechanical design, innovation, energy, transportation, ory the half-­pitch remained the smallest feature. Those were sim-­ nanotechnology, project management, imaging, pler, happier times. The industry sold microprocessors based on tribology, lean enterprise, technology policy, how fast the chips could process instructions, and that rate was healthcare, systems engineering, data pretty much directly related to how small the gate width was. We analysis and other topics of vital interest in the industry (I was working for Advanced Micro Devices, in to today’s engineers and scientists. 60 Years of excellence Sunnyvale, Calif., at the time) called it the time of the megahertz wars. These wars drove the shrinking, with the result that the gate width got much smaller than the half-­pitch. IntenSIVe ProGramS of 2-5 dayS So it was that, in the second half of the 1990s, the market’s endless appetite for better-­performing logic devices drove › led by renowned MIT pioneers microprocessors—which used to lag two to three years behind › taught on the MIT campus with MIT resources memory in half-­pitch—to start closing the gap. Because micro-­ › geared for busy professionals processor speed was largely determined by the dimensions of › designed for in-depth learning the gate, by 2000 the gate had become the smallest feature pro-­ › grant MIT certificates and CEUs duced in the semiconductor industry. ContaCt While speed is also a key parameter for memories, there was 617.253.2101 [email protected] no similar war between memory manufacturers seeking to drive http://shortprograms.mit.edu/summer up the frequency with which transistors execute their instruc-­ tions, known as clock frequencies. Memory makers focused on reducing the size of each memory cell on their chips so that they could squeeze ever more bits into less and less real estate. So let’s recap. Today’s cutting-­edge 32-­nm-­node logic chips are actually at a 50-­ or 56-­nm half-pitch. Today’s cutting-­edge mem-­ ory chips, if they were described in logic terms, would be at the 22-­nm node, but they are in fact at about a 34-­nm half-­pitch, put-­ Massachusetts Institute of Technology ting them ahead of logic development by a full chip generation. The unifying factor is that both memory and logic have always been made with optical lithography. But because memories and Put MIt to Work For You logic have different shrink rates, memory makers will have to be the first to make the transition from optical lithography to the Enroll in MIT classes taken lithography technology that will succeed it, called extreme ultra-­ violet lithography (EUV). People who dread the transition to EUV over one or more semesters, often claim that it’s not optical lithography, putting it in the same full or part time. zoo with the other next-­generation lithographies, such as electron beam lithography and imprint lithography. I prefer not to distin-­ guish between optical and EUV: EUV is optical, inasmuch as it is As an ASP Fellow, you will: electromagnetic radiation, only with a wavelength that’s about one-­fifteenth as long. › investigate the latest advances in your field › design a curriculum to meet individual and company goals he death of optical lithography, chipmakers have been › learn to harness the power of new technologies known to say, is always seven years away. That joke was › access the full range of MIT courses and resources new 30 years ago, when chips were being fabricated at the › build a lifelong network of colleagues T 10-­micrometer node. Today’s chips squeeze 4 billion transistors into a space smaller than a postage stamp. The technology that Accepting applications for Fall 2009 brought about that stunning advancement, and the key driver Classes begin September 8 of the semiconductor industry (which this year is expected to http://advancedstudy.mit.edu/fall have revenues of US $200 billion), is this method of tiny writ-­ [email protected] ing called lithography. 617. 253.6128 Lithography is why Moore’s Law endures after 44 years. Nevertheless, for the last 20 years, experts have been uneasy about lithography, which projects the fabulously complex patterns of a modern chip onto a semiconductor wafer using electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than those of visible light. Fundamentally, optical lithography hasn’t changed much in almost 50 years. It has become more sophisticated, but its kinship

50 Na • iEEE SpEctrum • april 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org to old-­time film-­and-­chemistry photography is still discernible. Microchips start out as small blank patches on a silicon wafer about the size of a dinner plate. The virgin wafer is shuttled through a series of machines in a chip-­manufacturing plant the size of a couple of American football fields. At the end of its jour-­ ney through hundreds of tools, the wafer emerges inscribed with the patterns of hundreds of identical microchips. The wafer is then broken up into these constituent microchips, which are sent out into the world to populate laptops, thumb drives, cellphones, and the GPS in your car. The patterns that distinguish all these different kinds of chips are created with optical lithography. First, the wafer is covered with a thin insulating layer and then with a light-­sensitive material called photoresist. Light streams onto the resist through an opaque mask with holes that let light through to form a pattern. This system projects postage-­ stamp-­size patterns onto the wafer until the entire wafer is cov-­ ered with identical microchip patterns. The exposed areas of the photoresist are weakened when the light hits them, and then a corrosive plasma etches the pattern into the silicon. The leftover photoresist is washed away, leaving the photoresist pattern engraved into the semiconductor wafer. The process has gotten more complicated with each gener-­ ation of shrinking features. Lithography toolmakers have had to reduce the wavelengths of light they use to project chip pat-­ terns through the masks. They’ve also had to find heroic optical tricks to finesse the light into depositing patterns far smaller than the wavelengths themselves. The shorter the wavelength, the finer the resolution of the fea-­ tures you can print on the chips and the more transistors you can squeeze onto the chip. The history of semiconductor lithography is essentially the history of the search for stronger and shorter-­ wavelength sources of light. The first commercial lithography tools were manufactured in the early 1980s. They started skirt-­ ing the edge of the visible spectrum with light at a wavelength of 436 nm, somewhere between violet and indigo. In 1987, steppers graduated to the ultraviolet 365 nm of mercury lamps and then to 248 nm in 1993. Finally, in 2001 the industry arrived at the 193-­nm light, derived from an argon-­fluoride laser. This laser, still used today to create patterns with feature sizes down to 38 nm, is pro-­ jected through massive lenses that weigh nearly half a metric ton and cost several million dollars. When semiconductor lithography began in the 1960s, the feature sizes of transistors were much larger than the wave-­ length of the exposure light. To print his original transistors, Gordon Moore actually cut patterns into Rubylith and pro-­ jected them onto chrome-­covered glass plates, or masks, using 16-­mm movie-­camera lenses that Robert Noyce had bought in a northern California camera shop for a few hundred dollars. Moore’s transistors had a minimum feature size of around 100 µm, big enough to see with the naked eye. Lithography had to keep up with feature sizes as they shrank to the size of the wavelengths of light itself—in the hundreds of nanometers—and then, more recently, vanished into mere fractions of the exposure wavelength. As each image is exposed onto the semiconductor wafer, the lenses reduce the images 75 percent. Such sophisticated systems can expose more than 140 wafers per hour. Advances of this sort have improved resolution by a factor of about a thousand from the days of Moore and Noyce and the movie-­camera lenses. Impressive though it is to be printing today’s 38-­nm features with 193-­nm light, what the industry would like more than any-­ thing else is to get back to printing features that aren’t any smaller www.spectrum.ieee.org april 2009 • iEEE SpEctrum • Na 51 than the wavelength being used to print them. Here’s why. Light diffracts when it shines through the mask, spreading out and here is only one credible blurring the edges. However, you want to capture as much of the software package source... light as possible to produce a good image. That means you need some pretty good tricks to corral all the light into the pattern. If When you need to study you can’t, your image will be blurry. grounding or electromagnetic Because of tricks like water-­immersion lithography—which interference accurately, reliably and economically. increases resolution by replacing the standard air gap between the lens and the wafer surface with a liquid—chipmakers have Classical Equipotential Grounding been able to print sharp images within these parameters. But that Multiple grounding systems having any ability has come at a great cost. ASML, Nikon, and Canon have shape, in simple or complex soils, 1Automated including any number of layers or het- all pushed water-­immersion lenses as far as they can. Efforts to erogeneous discrete volumes. 2 Accurate switch from a wavelength of 193 nm to 157 nm have failed because AutoGroundDesign of difficulties with optical materials. AutoGrid Pro Powerful Most industry experts agree that features of complemen-­ AutoGround & MultiGround 3 tary metal-­oxide-­semiconductor (CMOS) silicon transistors Interference Analysis & Environmental Impact will continue scaling to below 20 nm. But that won’t happen Perform fast, yet complex & accurate, without extreme ultraviolet lithography. interference analyses on pipelines, railways, etc. Examine electromag- xtreme ultraviolet lithography uses a wavelength of netic impacts to the environment. Dedicated, flexible tools 13.5 nm, right near the point where the deep ultraviolet SESTLC simplify and automate Right-Of-Way every aspect of your work. becomes X-­rays. If we could harness light at that wave-­ Exceptional documenta- E SES-Shield tion, context sensitive help length, we could continue shrinking features without many of MultiLines & SES-Enviro and technical support bring the resolution enhancement tricks we have developed to push you peace of mind, Frequency & Time Domain Analysis when you need help. 193-­nm lithography to the limit. ASML Holding, where I am chief scientist, recently introduced an EUV lithography system Upgrade to the full power of MultiFields or that can produce chips with features smaller than 30 nm. Nikon CDEGS which integrate grounding, electromag- netic compatibility, environmental impact and reportedly has a similar tool in development. lightning or switching surge analysis. ASML expects to ship its first commercial EUV production Whitepaperad_1-4:Layout 1 9/12/08 1:17 PM Page 1 www.sestech.com; Email: [email protected] lithography systems next year. We have already installed two Toll free: 1-800-668-3737; Tel: +1-514–336-2511 World Leader in Grounding & EMI EUV development tools—one at the Albany NanoTech Complex, in New York state, and the other at IMEC, in Leuven, Belgium. These machines produce patterns with a 28-­nm half-­pitch, bet-­ ter than the so-­called 22-­nm node. These EUV developments are welcome, but they shouldn’t be Download free interpreted as proof that EUV has arrived. The systems are exper-­ imental, capable of turning out chips at a rate of a few wafers per white papers on hour, much slower than would be needed for a commercial system. EUV still faces significant technical challenges. Consider the con-­ tortions we have to go through inside the box to get 13.5-­nm radia-­ tion. It can’t be done with any traditional light source. Instead, we use a big carbon dioxide laser to vaporize liquid tin droplets [see illustration, “Seeing the Light”]. First we boil the tin, and then we drip the liquid tin in care-­ fully timed droplets, synchronized to the firing of the CO2 laser so that it hits each tin drop as it falls. When the laser hits the droplet, the tin is vaporized, and 13.5-­nm photons are released. Expert Information from Experts. A spherical reflector mirror takes this radiation and channels it into the optical system. Quite a bit of the original radiation is lost in the process because you can capture only what is collected in Download a free the reflector, and the reflector does not surround the tin drop-­ lets completely. The upshot is that only a small percentage of the white paper today! radiation created at the 13.5-­nm wavelength reaches the photo-­ resist to make the pattern. And that’s just the first challenge. At 13.5 nm, your optics can’t be made of glass, because glass—and air, and just about every-­ www.spectrum.ieee.org/whitepapers thing else—absorbs 13.5-­nm radiation. You need a good vacuum to prevent EUV light from being absorbed by stray molecules. You need to use mirrors rather than lenses, and that brings up the next issue: About 30 percent of the light that hits that mir-­ ror is absorbed. Finally, not all the radiation emitted by your CO2 ®� laser and tin setup is 13.5-­nm radiation—some of it is infrared and

52 Na • iEEE SpEctrum • april 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org is lost as heat. EUV’s critics say that Pitch Counts ing out how good the vacuum has to too much power is necessary to yield be to prevent EUV light from being the number of photons required to Year Node Half-pitch Gate length* absorbed by stray molecules. expose wafers at the chip fab. 2009 a 32 52 29 The mirrors in our EUV litho-­ ho are the potential cus-­ graphic system are based on Bragg 2007 a 45 68 38 tomers for EUV? Anyone reflection, a concept used for opti-­ who wants to stay on the 2005 b 65 90 32 W cal fibers and other waveguides. road map implied by Moore’s Law: big To create a strong Bragg reflec-­ 2004 b 90 90 37 memory makers that have to shrink tor, you start with a rigid substrate, relentlessly, the largest microprocessor b then coat it with several dozen alter-­ 2003 100 100 45 companies, and chip foundries.

nating layers of molybdenum and 2001 c 130 150 65 But the majority of semiconductor silicon. The layers must be spaced companies don’t and won’t need to be with a uniform thickness of about 1999 c 180 230 140 at the cutting edge. Consider the chip-­ half the wavelength to reinforce the 1997 d 250 250 200 foundry business, which accounts for reflected wave as it bounces off the a large and growing share of the over-­ many dozen layers. With this stag-­ 1995 d 350 350 350 all chip business worldwide. gering technique, it’s possible to Taiwan is home to several 1992 d 500 500 500 make a surface that’s about 70 per-­ chip foundries, the two biggest * Here, gate width is defined as the physical gate length, which in recent cent reflective (the other 30 percent years became smaller than the printed gate length. being Taiwan Semiconductor is absorbed by the mirror surface). a ITRS data 2008 update b ITRS data 2006 c ITRS data 2001 Manufacturing Co. and United Micro-­ d The EUV development tools use ITRS data 1997 electronics Corp., both headquar-­ Note that each year skipped is identified on the ITRS as between nodes. a different light source. They still tered in Hsinchu. A chip foundry use the tin droplets, but instead of a Road maP: Before 1985, chips were classified fabricates anyone’s chips, on a con-­ fairly empirically. Node, half-pitch, and physical CO2 laser, they vaporize the tin drops gate length are given for advanced logic such as tract basis. Unlike integrated device with an electrical discharge—a small microprocessor (mpu). memory (Dram) half-pitch is makers like Intel, Samsung, and lightning bolt, basically. These have smaller by approximately one generation. in 2005, the Toshiba, which design and build all proved rather inefficient. international technology roadmap for Semiconductors their own chips, some semiconductor One of the many technical chal-­ (itrS) retired the term “node,” as it was no longer a companies do none of their own meaningfulniad_0409_13pgsqu:Layout descriptor. 1 3/4/09 1:35 PM Page 1 lenges of making EUV work is figur-­ fabrication. Others have evolved Sign me up! The Robotics Continuum Webinar Series ROBOTICS 101 - 16 APRIL 2009 Be a part of the Robotics Continuum! Explore the ubiquitous world of robotics, Share your best practice or idea as it relates focusing on unmanned vehicle applications to Robotics as a video post on YouTube. in academia and industry. Learn about how Just email the link to your video to the next generation of embedded [email protected] by 23 April, 2009. technologies is helping roboticists design, prototype and deploy sophisticated robotic Your video could be selected to be architectures. featured alongside the next Robotics Continuum webinar on IEEE Spectrum Moderator: Bob Malone, IEEE Online! To learn learn more, please Presenter: Anu Saha, Academic Product visit ni.com/robotics. What’s New @ IEEE Manager, National Instruments 10 FREE NEWSLETTERS TO CHOOSE FROM UPCOMING WEBINARS: Sponsored by SUBSCRIBE TODAY: • Sense, Think, Act – 18 June 2009 www.ieee.org/whats-new • Robots in Academia –17 Sept. 2009 • The Future of Robotics –12 Nov. 2009

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from a past where they made their own restrictions. For example, with double chips to becoming “fab-­lite,” where they patterning at 193-­nm wavelengths, the retain some facilities to develop the ini-­ only things that are easy to print are par-­ tial technology but then send their vol-­ allel or perpendicular lines and spaces. ume business to foundries. This allows It’s quite difficult to print holes or elbows, these companies to do rapid develop-­ and if you’ve ever looked at an actual ment under their own control and avoid (but unexceptional) circuit design, it’s Surface Mount the cost of massive fabs for volume. More absolutely lousy with zigs and zags. (and Plug In) and more companies in the United States So, first, companies painstakingly Transformers and and Europe are taking these approaches rework their designs to meet these onerous Inductors because they believe that building a new restrictions (no elbows! no zigs! no zags!). fab (which can cost about $5 billion) is an Then they’ve got to split the design into See Pico’s full Catalog immediately impossible expense in the current eco-­ two or more parts. There is just no easy www.picoelectronics.com nomic climate. In the United States alone, way to do that. Different electronic design AMD, Freescale, and Texas Instruments automation companies are working on that Low Profile from all recently went fab-­lite. problem, but none of them has been able to Soon only a few foundries, many of create the vaunted “black box” method, an ht. them in the Far East, will remain to run ideal tool that will send the design on its .19" all these companies’ production lines. way, no brain required. Others include Chartered Semiconductor Double patterning also demands in Singapore and Semiconductor more process steps, which again adds Manufacturing International Corp. in to the cost by cutting effective through-­ Shanghai, as well as IBM Microelectronics put, increasing fab cycle time, and add-­ Audio Transformers in East Fishkill, N.Y., which makes pro-­ ing additional defects. If your original Impedance Levels 10 ohms to 250k ohms, Power Levels to 3 Watts, Frequency Response cessors for its own equipment but has process could yield 100 wafers an hour, ±3db 20Hz to 250Hz. All units manufactured also become a dominant foundry for using double patterning will leave you and tested to MIL-PRF-27. QPL Units available. game processors. AMD recently spun with much less. If you’d been turning a Power & EMI Inductors off its manufacturing operations to start profit at 100 per hour, there’s no guaran-­ Ideal for noise, spike and Power Filtering Globalfoundries, a joint venture with the tee you will at 50. Applications in Power Supplies, DC-DC Converters and Switching Regulators government of Abu Dhabi. Then there’s depreciation. Most fab About half the foundry customers need owners keep their tools running 24 hours Pulse Transformers chips that can be fabricated with the pre-­ a day because they depreciate at the stag-­ 10 Nanoseconds to 100 Microseconds. ET vious generation of process technology— gering rate of several thousand dollars Rating to 150 Volt Microsecond, Manufactured and tested to MIL-PRF-21038. currently 65 nm. Another 40 percent of per hour. That’s one of the major prob-­ foundry customers use even larger, ear-­ lems with double patterning. Cutting Multiplex Data Bus lier nodes. At most, only 10 percent have your throughput means you’re losing Pulse Transformers orders that require the most up-­to-­date thousands of dollars an hour. Pretty Plug-In units meet the requirements of QPL-MIL-PRF 21038/27. chipmaking technology, to keep up with soon you’re talking about real money. Surface units are electrical equivilents the likes of Intel and Samsung. These of QPL-MIL-PRF 21038/27. customers include companies that create emory-chip manufacturing DC-DC Converter graphics processors, FPGAs, and phone doesn’t require as many masks as Transformers chips. Many foundry customers are focus-­ logic does. Where memories have Input voltages of 5V, 12V, 24V And 48V. M Standard Output Voltages to 300V (Special ing on design innovation, which may or only a few wiring layers, state-­of-­the-­art voltages can be supplied). Can be used as self may not require being at the forefront of logic has a complicated stack of as many saturating or linear switching applications. All units manufactured and tested to MIL-PRF-27. chip-­fab technology. as 10 metal layers. Consequently, a set of The standard sedative to EUV anxi-­ masks needed to make a logic chip is going 400Hz/800Hz ety is the assurance that the gap will be to cost more than a set for a memory chip. Power Transformers bridged by double-­patterning lithog-­ Both processes require the use of expen-­ 0.4 Watts to 150 Watts. Secondary Voltages 5V to 300V. Units manufactured to MIL-PRF-27 raphy, a technique of last resort that sive masks. And masks need an inspection Grade 5, Class S (Class V, 1550C available). improves the resolution possible with tool to insure against infinitesimal flaws. 193-­nm light by making two or more Yet another tool is needed to repair these exposures, slightly shifted with respect flaws, another expense that neither logic to each other, and with two or more dif-­ nor memory manufacturers can avoid. Delivery-Stock to one weekSee EEM for sample quantities ferent masks [see “Seeing Double,” IEEE Memory makers don’t care as much or send direct Spectrum, November 2008]. about the cost of the masks because for FREE PICO Catalog But double patterning is more cum-­ they don’t use as many. For them, a sin-­ Call toll free 800-431-1064 bersome than many people realize. The gle mask set will make up to 100 million in NY call 914-738-1400 Fax 914-738-8225 trouble comes down to design restric-­ chips. A $1 million mask set, even dou-­ tions, cost, and yield. To understand bled, works out to about a penny per PICO Electronics,Inc. why, let’s go back to the foundry cus-­ chip. But for logic chipmakers, the eco-­ 143 Sparks Ave. Pelham, N.Y. 10803 E Mail: [email protected] tomer. With double patterning, these nomics are completely different, because www.picoelectronics.com companies face a horde of new design the vast majority of Continued on page 56

54 Na • iEEE SpEctrum • april 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org Shrinking Possibilities Continued from page 54

The Brightest Minds mask designs may be used to make only a few hundred wafers. That’s because of Discussing the Biggest Topics. the punishingly rapid evolution required to keep developing the latest features for cellphones or digital cameras. If we meet our targets for EUV through-­ put, EUV is preferable to double pattern-­ ing because it lets layers be exposed with single masks. Double patterning begins to fail at about 20 nm. Lens designers at Carl Zeiss (ASML’s supplier) believe we can build EUV optics capable of reaching at least an 11-­nm half-­pitch. The principal logic makers are spend-­ Where Today’s Technology Gurus Converge. ing hundreds of millions of dollars on R&D every year to keep scaling their Find out what’s REALLY happening in today’s hottest transistors, in speed as well as in physical technology fields at the IEEE Spectrum Tech Insiders size. Memory chipmakers, on the other Webinar Series! hand, are now in glorious pursuit of the “Grand Unified Memory”—one technol-­ ogy that will do it all, easily taking over UPCOMING WEBINARS for the NAND flash memories you find • Delivering During the Downturn: Engineering Managers of Top in your MP3 player and USB drives, and Semiconductor Companies Speak Out - 23 April 2009 the DRAM that dominates applications This webinar will introduce you to the best practices in use during this economic for high-­speed (but power-­hungry) com-­ downturn within six of the top ten IC development organizations. putation. The contenders for this crown www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcast/7932 include phase-­change memories, resis-­ tive RAM, and spin torque transfer mag-­ • Robotics 101 - 16 April 2009 netic RAM (STT-­MRAM), but these find In this first episode of the robotics series, explore the ubiquitous world of themselves approximately in the same robotics, focusing on unmanned vehicle applications in academia and industry. place as EUV—each concept has been www.spectrum.ieee.oeg/webcasts proved and even demonstrated, but it’s not quite ready for prime time. OTHER WEBINARS IN THE SERIES – AVAILABLE ON DEMAND s it worth it? That’s the billion-­dollar • Parallel Signal Processing Using MATLAB® and Star-P® question. Scaling won’t continue for-­ This webinar will demonstrate how signal processing applications can be ever, if only because we will eventually adapted to run in parallel using very high level languages (VHLLs) such as I be down in the atomic realm. MATLAB. www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcast/7669 Right now we’re at 34-­nm features. • Long-Term Care Planning in a Recessionary Environment Let’s assume no features can be smaller This webinar will address the recession’s impact on long-term care, providing than the spacing between one atom and insights and tips for planning and the alternative funding options, LTC Insurance, the next, which in silicon is 0.546 nm. and the tax treatment of LTC Insurance. www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcast/7787 Within a few years, progress won’t • Faster Product Development Using Multi-Domain Modeling and Simulation depend so much on making transistor Advanced multi-domain modeling and simulation solutions that are driving parts smaller. Instead, it will increasingly the development and enhancement of modern consumer products are depend on new transistor designs and on discussed with examples. www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcast/7689 materials that will make the transistors and the chips they reside on unrecogniz-­ Sponsors: able. In the next few generations of shrink, the industry needs EUV lithography to continue Moore’s Law economics. The enormous capital investments required by optical lithography and sil-­ icon manufacturing mean that no new technologies will easily displace these Sign up today! workhorses. To take over, any contender technology must build on, and incorpo-­ www.spectrum.ieee.org/webcasts rate, the incumbents. o

56 Na • iEEE SpEctrum • april 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org nvidia tesla 2008 960 cores 439.1 teraflops/$1 million * * Based on the cost playstation 3 of building your own cluster 2007 Tesla supercomputer out of four Tesla 8 PlayStation 3s C1060 units. Complete 375 Tflops/$1 million † instructions are available at nvidia.com. † Seven processors per node at 150 gigaflops per unit for a single processor (11 processors per node for a dual processor); $400-plus per node. ‡ 6480 Opteron CPUs and 12 960 Cell processors.

teraflops per us $1 million earth simulator 2002 blue gene/l 2004 5120 processors 65 536 processors 0.0175 Tflops/$1 million 2.8 Tflops/$1 million illiac iv 1976 64 processors 0.00000048 Tflops/$1 million

cray-1 1976 roadrunner 2008 1 processor cray y-mp 1988 asci red 1997 19 440 processors ‡ 0.00001778 Tflops/$1 million 8 vector processors 4510 processors 8.3 Tflops/$1 million 0.000115 Tflops/$1 million 0.01818182 Tflops/$1 million

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

The Supercomputer Goes Personal idEo gAmErS and graphic artists have in pS3s at, say, Best Buy would be about uS $3200. Vfunded a revolution in high-performance twenty years earlier you would have needed computing. the same massively parallel chips that more than 500 cray X-mps, at a cost of at least figure out exactly the right color for each pixel in $78 billion, to break the teraflops boundary. Street Fighter IV are now being used to calculate today, graphics titan Nvidia advertises its protein folding, predict climate change, and crack new workstation, the tesla, as a “personal the encryption of hitherto-secure Web sites. supercomputer.” it clusters four Nvidia c1060 in october 2007, astrophysicist gaurav processing boards, each of which unites Khanna, of the university of massachusetts 240 graphics cores to process instructions at nearly dartmouth, lashed together eight Sony teraflops speeds. We calculate it as about 17 percent playStation 3s to continue the simulations more cost-effective than Khanna’sp S3 solution, of black holes he used to perform and a lot more elegant. of course, neither is perfect. using rented time on traditional For one thing, the tesla and the pS3 do single- supercomputers funded by the precision floating-point calculations using four 8-bit National Science Foundation. bytes. the roadrunner, by contrast, uses 64-bit He got about 1.2 teraflops; floating integers. But is the greater accuracy worth the hardware cost an additional $117 722 400? —Paul Wallich

64 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • April 2009 www.spectrum.ieee.org