Brain Computer Interface

A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a neural-control interface (NCI), mind-machine interface (MMI), direct neural interface (DNI), or brain–machine interface (BMI), is a direct communication pathway between an enhanced or wired brain and an external device. BCI differs from neuromodulation in that it allows for bidirectional information flow. BCIs are often directed at researching, mapping, assisting, augmenting, or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions.

Research on BCIs began in the 1970s at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. The papers published after this research also mark the first appearance of the expression brain–computer interface in scientific literature.

The field of BCI research and development has since focused primarily on neuroprosthetics applications that aim at restoring damaged hearing, sight and movement. Thanks to the remarkable cortical plasticity of the brain, signals from implanted prostheses can, after adaptation, be handled by the brain like natural sensor or effector channels. Following years of animal experimentation, the first neuroprosthetic devices implanted in humans appeared in the mid-1990s.

Poking, pinching, and swiping at the air

As of 2018, smartphones have replaced standard mobile phones in much of the developed world. This means a large portion of the world is now familiar with the various tactile commands mentioned above. Through apps and games, smartphone users have learned a large variety of abstract skills to control the relative supercomputers sitting in their pockets.  It's these skills that will prepare consumers for the next wave of devices—devices that will allow us to more easily merge the digital world with our real-world environments. So let's take a look at some of the tools we'll use to navigate our future world.

Open-air gesture control as of 2018, we’re still in the micro-age of touch control. We still poke, pinch, and swipe our way through our mobile lives. But that touch control is slowly giving way to a form of open-air gesture control. For the gamers out there, your first interaction with this may have been playing overactive Nintendo Wii games or the Xbox Kinect games—both consoles use advanced motion-capture technology to match player movements with game avatars. 

Well, this tech isn't staying confined to video games and green screen filmmaking; it will soon enter the broader consumer electronics market. One striking example of what this might look like is a Google venture named Project Soli. Developers of this project use miniature radar to track the fine movements of your hand and fingers to simulate the poke, pinch, and swipe in open-air instead of against a screen. This is the kind of tech that will help make wearable easier to use, and thus more attractive to a wider audience.

The Fintech Renaissance

            Financial technology, often shortened to fintech, is technology and innovation that aims to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Fintech will likely also become greener in 2018. There is now a financial incentive for investments into quantum computing, which involves using the behavior of energy at a subatomic level to process computing functions at a billion times faster than today’s microprocessors.

 It is an emerging industry that uses technology to improve activities in finance.within the next two years as traditional financial institutions start treating cryptocurrencies and other digital assets similar to traditional fiat currencies with more efficient payment systems, loan processing, and credit instruments. Going green by using less energy to create bitcoins, will translate into earning more green.

At Renaissance we use new technology and innovation with available resources in order to compete in the marketplace of traditional financial institutions. Intermediaries are the delivery of financial services.

Parallella

Parallella is going to change the way that computers are made, and Adaptevaoffers you chance to join in on this revolution. Simply put, it’s a supercomputer for everyone. Basically, an energy-efficient computer built for processing complex software simultaneously and effectively. Real-time object tracking, holographic heads-up display, speech recognition will become even stronger and smarter with Parallella.

The project has been successfully funded so far, with an estimated delivery date of February 2013. For a mini supercomputer, the price seems really promising since it’s magically $99! It’s not recommended for the non-programmer and non-Linux user, but the kit is loaded with development software to create your personal projects.

I never thought the future of computing could be kick-started with just $99, which is made possible using crowdfunding platforms.

Event-Driven Applications

            An event-driven application is a computer program that is written to respond to actions generated by the user or the system. In a computing context, an event is any identifiable occurrence that has significance for system hardware or software. As such, events include both user-generated actions like mouse clicks and keystrokes and system-generated events such as program loading.

                 Event-driven programming separates event-processing logic from the rest of a program’s code. The event-driven approach contrasts with batch processing. Continue Reading About event-driven application are i)EDA software: Event-driven architecture and DB2 ii)Event-driven applications: Where they apply and how they are built iii)Read this excerpt from Event-Driven Processing in Action on eBizQ iv)SOA event-driven architecture (EDA) and complex event processing (CEP)

             Because event-driven programming is an approach rather than a type of language, event-driven apps can be created in any programming language. Depending on the specific application, event-driven processing can improve responsiveness, throughput and flexibility.

Future of Computers P5

                It's an abstract term that snuck its way into our public consciousness: the cloud. These days, most people under 40 know that it's something the modern world can't live without, that they personally can’t live without, but most people also barely understand what the cloud really is, let alone the coming revolution set to turn it on its head. In this chapter of our Future of Computers series, we’ll review what the cloud is, why it’s important, the trends pushing its growth, and then the macro trend that will change it forever.

              In other words, a server is any application that listens for requests over a network and then performs an action in response to said request. So when people refer to the cloud, they are actually referring to a group of servers where digital information and online services can be stored and accessed centrally, instead of inside individual computers.

                Overall, these edge computing needs to will spur a growing demand for ever more powerful computing and digital storage devices. And as is always the case, as computing power goes up, the applications for said computing power grows, leading to its increased use and demand, which then leads to a reduction of price due to economies of scale, and finally resulting in a world that will be consumed by data. In other words, the future belongs to the IT department, so be nice to them.

Data-driven healthcare

         The amount of data available in the world is growing exponentially, and analyzing large data sets (so-called big data) is becoming key for market analysis and competition. Analytics will dramatically shift away from reporting and towards predictive and prescriptive practices, dramatically improving the ability of healthcare providers to help the ill and injured. Even more importantly, it will create the possibility for truly personalized healthcare by allowing providers to impact the biggest determinants of health, including behaviours, genetics and environmental factors.

         The emergence of data-driven health care has presented tremendous opportunities as well as unprecedented challenges. Reducing health care costs while improving quality of care, handling complex, ever-changing demographics, and adapting to the rapid increase and globalization of patient data are just a few of the realities facing health care providers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and government entities today. 

        The need to derive insights from trusted health data has never been greater. The following stories illustrate just a few ways organizations today are using analytics to harness the potential of data, gain new insights, and transform the way we look at health at the individual and global level.

World's first 7nm GPUs

                 Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has made its 7nm Radeon VII graphics card available in India, as it aims to bolster the demand for high-end GPUs among computer gamers and content creators. The Radeon VII will start shipping from February 7.  Radeon VII was launched earlier this month at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

          The Radeon VII graphics card is based on the second-generation of Vega architecture optimised for TSMC’s 7nm architecture. The company claims the Radeon VII graphics card will provide twice the memory, 2.1 times memory bandwidth, and up to 29 per cent better gaming performance compared to the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics card, the company’s top-end graphics card.

            The Santa Clara, California-based company has been optimistic about the future of PC gaming in India. “With faster internet speeds, cheaper broadband tariffs and affordable gaming machines, the Indian PC gaming industry is growing rapidly and has evolved from being a fun to a serious business landscape”.  Sasa is of an opinion that PC gaming will always have an edge over smartphones and dedicated consoles due to the superior performance of machines and the ability to display better graphics.

Intel reveals 9th generation CPUs

              Intel is yet has to announce its 9^th Gen Core processors for laptops officially, but because the company needs to sort out all the things with authorities and regulators well in advance of actual product launches, CPU model numbers and general specifications have been published well ahead of the formal release. As it turns out, recently the company disclosed the first details about its 9^th Gen mobile Core i9, Core i7, and Core i5 H-series processors for higher-end laptops.

           Before proceeding to the actual products, let us make it clear what Intel actually revealed. Among other things, Intel (and other companies) has a number of export compliance metrics for its CPUs, including GFLOPS, Adjusted Peak Performance (APP), and Composite Theoretical Performance (CTP). These metrics are used by various governments to determine capabilities of CPUs and other processors. The APP and GFLOPS metrics are used by the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). Meanwhile, other authorities and regulators use CTP calculations, which are stated in Millions of Theoretical Operations Per Second (MTOPS), to assess what companies import to their countries. The CTP numbers are the ones that Intel published for its yet-to-be released CPUs.

           Since the new processors belong to Intel’s 9^th Gen Core family are designed to feature hardware mitigations against specific Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, a quick look at the basic specs that Intel published as well as their CTP numbers can shed some light on general specifications of the upcoming 9^th Gen Core H-series mobile processors.