2019年10月31日 星期四

從章青駒先生的600人開發部到 TSMC 的 8,000 人的研究部門

   




27:22NOW PLAYING
WATCH LATER






****
在產學合作之外，台積電的半導體基礎科學研究下一步？劉德音表示，將要在台設立 8,000 人的研究部門，為公司未來進行研究開發。
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

2019年10月30日 星期三

Can video games help reduce symptoms of mental health conditions?



Can video games help reduce symptoms of mental health conditions?
TECHNOLOGY 29 October 2019


By Jacob Aron
Portrait series of young talented painter, doing miniature paintings
Video games could be used to reduce symptoms of mental health conditions
Klaus Vedfelt/Getty
Could people with mental health conditions one day use video games to help manage their symptoms? It is a question that Tameem Antoniades, creative director of UK games developer Ninja Theory, and Paul Fletcher, a psychiatrist at the University of Cambridge, aim to answer as part of The Insight Project.
The pair previously collaborated on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a video game that has won accolades for its portrayal of the experience of psychosis. As they developed the game, they wondered whether video games could also be used to measure and modify people’s mental distress, and have now begun prototyping games based on biometric signals.
“Instead of using a game controller, we are using your physiology,” says Antoniades.
For example, the pair have created a sailing game that reads your pulse. As your heart rate increase, the in-game sea becomes more stormy, slowing down your progress. “People compete on how quickly they can slow their heart rate,” says Antoniades.
The idea of games that respond to physiological signals is nothing new, but they have never had much commercial success in the past – for instance, Nintendo cancelled its plans for a pulse monitoring accessory for the Wii console because it didn’t work reliably.

Read more: Emotional video gaming makes the action real

Fletcher says The Insight Project will be taking a more scientific approach. Rather than just reading a player’s pulse as a single number, he wants to study the waveform in detail.
“People talk about your basic heart rate as being the key signal that determines your state of arousal or anxiety, but actually there is a whole lot more to the heart beat signal than that,” he says.
Cataloguing these biometric signals will allow the team to build games that respond to how the player is feeling, says Antoniades, and perhaps even act as a form of therapy.
“If we know what state of mind they are in, we can create challenges for them to overcome,” he says “By overcoming those challenges, they will effectively learn to control their own biometric signals.”
Although the pair plan for their eventual game to be based on therapeutic processes and to be used in treatment, the goal is to produce a commercially viable game like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. “It’s something exciting that people want to play, not something they are forced to play by their therapist,” says Antoniades.


Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2221269-can-video-games-help-reduce-symptoms-of-mental-health-conditions/#ixzz63tK4rA1M

張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

2019年10月28日 星期一

Floppy Disks

Floppy Disks

The antiquated system that controls the U.S. nuclear arsenal quietly got a long-awaited update this summer — eliminating the use of eight-inch floppy disks that are more than 50 years old.
Proving that the technological past — like the future — is not evenly distributed, floppy disks have hung around far longer than most people would have expected. Norway’s nationalized health plan, which once distributed thousands of 3.5-inch disks to physicians every month, only phased out their use a few years ago.
A missile combat crew member inserting a floppy disk into a communication module at a missile alert facility in 2014.  Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The floppy disk was initially created by IBM in 1967, with its name derived from a magnetic disk enclosed in a flexible plastic envelope. Initial versions could hold about 175 KB of data. The disks shrank over time — from eight inches to 5.25, and then to 3.5 — before abruptly falling out of favor, most notably when the iMac debuted without a disk drive in 1998.
The disks haven’t been manufactured for several years, but are still available on Amazon and from specialty retailers. The idea of them, however, may endure as the “save” icon in many modern apps and other software.
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

2019年10月26日 星期六

Why Science History Matters — Caltech Magazine

A new partnership between Caltech and The Huntington aims to give the history of science and technology a timely boost.
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

2019年10月24日 星期四

Google Claims To Achieve Quantum Supremacy — IBM Pushes Back

 谷歌宣稱實現量子計算突破 ：谷歌宣布已實現“量子優越性”，其量子計算器能夠在3分20秒內完成世界上最強大的超級計算機花費10000年才能完成的計算量，這讓目前所有的超級計算機相形見絀。 

NPR
Google Claims To Achieve Quantum Supremacy — IBM Pushes Back
October 23, 20194:32 PM ET
PAOLO ZIALCITA

Google's processor, Sycamore, performed a truly random-number generation in 200 seconds. The achievement marks a major breakthrough in the decadeslong quest to use quantum mechanics to solve computational problems. Above, a Google sign at the company's campus in Mountain View, Calif.
Jeff Chiu/AP
Google says it has built a computer that is capable of solving problems that classical computers practically cannot. According to a report published in the scientific journal Nature, Google's processor, Sycamore, performed a truly random-number generation in 200 seconds. That same task would take about 10,000 years for a state-of-the-art supercomputer to execute.
The achievement marks a major breakthrough in the technology world's decadeslong quest to use quantum mechanics to solve computational problems. Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote that the company started exploring the possibility of quantum computing in 2006.
In classical computers, bits can store information as either a 0 or a 1 in binary notation. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can be both 0 and 1. According to Google, the Sycamore processor uses 53 qubits, which allows for a drastic increase in speed compared with classical computers.
The report acknowledges that the processor's practical applications are limited. Google says Sycamore can generate truly random numbers without utilizing pseudo-random formulas that classical computers use.
Pichai called the success of Sycamore the "hello world" moment of quantum computing.

"With this breakthrough we're now one step closer to applying quantum computing to—for example—design more efficient batteries, create fertilizer using less energy, and figure out what molecules might make effective medicines," Pichai wrote.
IBM has pushed back, saying Google hasn't achieved supremacy because "ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity."
On its blog, IBM further discusses its objections to the term "quantum supremacy." The authors write that the term is widely misinterpreted.

"First because, as we argue above, by its strictest definition the goal has not been met," IBM's blog says. "But more fundamentally, because quantum computers will never reign 'supreme' over classical computers, but will rather work in concert with them, since each have their unique strengths."
News of Google's breakthrough has raised concerns among some people, such as presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, who believe quantum computing will render password encryption useless. Theoretical computer science professor Scott Aaronson refuted these claims on his blog, writing that the technology needed to break cryptosystems does not exist yet.
The concept of quantum computers holding an advantage over classical computers has dated back to the early 1980s. In 2012, John Preskill, a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech, coined the term "quantum supremacy."
Paolo Zialcita is an intern on NPR's News Desk.

洪士灝
IBM打臉Google，說發表在Nature上的論文並沒有達到「量子霸權」。
我們做計算機效能比較、評估、優化的研究，首先告訴學生的就是公平性。很多人宣稱使用GPU或硬體加速某某演算法多少倍速度，但是比較的對象是在一個CPU核心上未經優化的程式，根本就不公平，甚至可說是作弊。
IBM在文中列舉在傳統電腦上可做的優化項目，說Google都沒做，才會覺得量子計算快得不得了。IBM說他們可以用傳統電腦在2.5天內做完計算，所以根本不算量子霸權。（採用較嚴謹的定義而言。）
我想，量子霸權出現在某些應用領域是遲早的問題，IBM這個打臉的動作並非捍衛傳統計算架構，而是不願見到Google如此宣稱而已。






 smidgen, quantum computer,   ‘quantum supremacy’
Its research paper is now available to read in its entirety

A quantum computer has carried out in a smidgen over three minutes a calculation that would take Summit, the world’s current-best classical supercomputer, 10,000 years to execute
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:
訂閱： 文章 (Atom)