🧠🦾 What's Next for Next-Generation Computing?

Short and sweet, just the most important news in (next-gen) computing this week.

Spotlights

🔥 Why the Chips Get Hot (Asianometry)

“Today's leading-edge chips get hot. Like really hot. And nowadays much work is being done to try and keep them from getting TOO hot. Fancy things like dipping the whole chip into water or oil. But why do the chips get hot?”

⚡️ Production of Q.ANT Photonic AI Accelerators Begins in Stuttgart (EETimes)

“Q.ANT, the German startup making photonic AI accelerator chips from lithium niobate, has repurposed an existing CMOS line into a pilot line for its photonic compute chips, and begun production.”

⚡️ Computing Breakthrough: New Light-Based Computer Takes Over! (Anastasi in Tech)

Learn more about how the new chips by Q.ANT work and how they compare to GPUs.

🦾 China research on next-generation computer chips is double the US output (Nature)

“China is now producing most of the basic research that could underpin future computing hardware, an analysis has found. If that work develops into commercial applications, the United States might soon find it impossible to use export controls to retain its competitive advantage in high-performance microchip design and production”

🧠 Incipient Ferroelectricity – What is it, and How Could it Change Computing? (Securities)

“Incipient ferroelectricity is when the ferroelectric characteristic only occurs in specific conditions: it can hold an electrical charge but needs certain conditions to achieve an electrical charge. … The incipient ferroelectricity can be used to create neuron-like computing systems, called neuromorphic computers.”

⚛️ Microsoft quantum computing 'breakthrough' faces fresh challenge (Nature)

“Microsoft announced the breakthrough, which could lead to a quantum computer more resistant to information loss than with other approaches, on 19 February. Without a peer-reviewed paper backing up the claim, some researchers were skeptical.”

Headlines

🤖 Google co-founder Larry Page reportedly has a new AI startup (TechCrunch)

🤖 Alibaba shares soar after Chinese tech giant unveils new DeepSeek rival (CNBC)

🤖 Diffusion models are interesting (RNikhil)

🤖 New method significantly reduces AI energy consumption: Researchers at the Technical University of Munich have developed a method that is 100 times faster and therefore much more energy efficient (TUM)

🦾 VyperCore reveals stunning 5x performance results from its VyperLab platform (VyperCore)

🦾 RISC-V for cars: Infineon announces microcontroller with new computing cores (Heise)

🦾 Nvidia and Broadcom test chips on Intel's 18A process: The tests could bring Intel orders worth hundreds of millions of US dollars (Heise)

🦾 TSMC announces $100bn US chip fab investment (DCD)

🦾 A full-stack memristor-based computation-in-memory system with software-hardware co-development (Nature)

🧠 A self-training spiking superconducting neuromorphic architecture (NPJ)

🧠 Quantum Dots in Neuromorphic Computing (AZO Quantum)

🧠🦾 Antiferromagnetic neuromorphic memory: New spintronic device achieves brain-like memory and processing (Phys)

🧠⚡️ A bioinspired in-materia analog photoelectronic reservoir computing for human action processing (Nature)

🧬 Melbourne start-up launches 'biological computer' made of human brain cells (ABC News)

– also, check out our 2022 interview with Cortical Labs: Shaping the Future of Biological Processing Units

⚡️ Alphabet's Taara chip uses light beams to provide high-speed internet: Taara is a successor to Alphabet's Project Loon internet broadcasting balloons (Engadget)

⚛️ Superconducting Quantum Computing Beyond 100 Qubits (APS Physics)

⚛️ Thinner than a ribbon: Dutch discovery boosts quantum computing (Innovation Origins)

⚛️ NTT Unveils First Quantum Computing Architecture Separating Memory and Processor (Quantum Insider)

⚛️ Welinq and QphoX Partner to Connect Superconducting Quantum Processors (Photonics)

⚛️ China hits new landmark in global quantum computing race (Global Times)

⚛️ Why We Don’t Have Real Quantum Computing Yet (Forbes)

⚛️ Microsoft quantum computing 'breakthrough' faces fresh challenge: Analysis pokes holes in protocol that underpins Microsoft’s claim to have created the first topological qubits (Nature)

Funding News

⚛️ $10M Seed – Quantum Industries: quantum secure communication technology for critical infrastructure (Quantum Insider)

⚛️ €20M Series A – QuantWare: provider of quantum hardware and creator of the VIO QPU scaling technology (TechCrunch)

🦾 $66.5M EU Funding – Axelera AI: running generative AI and computer vision inference workloads at the network edge (Silicon Angle)

🤖 $70M Government Investment – Multiverse Computing: software inspired by quantum computing that allows AI models to be compressed to 10% of the original size (Quantum Insider)

🤖 $3.5B Series E – Anthropic: next-generation AI systems

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