DNA Data Storage, Backpack Space Internet, Moon Caves, Flying Taxis, OpenAI's Strawberry, Glass Substrate race, Avalanche of AI Mobile Phones & more..

Snaps to Inspire Innovation in You - 000FH

Innovative Product Snaps.?.?.

?Following, not necessarily new launches, intrigued me with their innovative features.?

• Starlink Mini, Space internet in your backpack. The laptop sized WiFi router connects to Starlink satellites and offer speed upto 100Mbps. It can be powered by your regular power bank. Currently priced at $599, it requires additional $30 per month to enable this roaming service. This is on top of the $120/month residential plan. The prices may come down as per initial reports. Apart from an ideal travel companion, this can be game changer in disaster or rescue operations

• Neon Smart Bike Helmet’s, rear light gives better visibility to city riders & gives certified protection up to 45km/hr?. It even comes in adult & kids range, with proper certification also for kids. It comes with industry first Modular Impact design principle, so you can change any parts if its needed. Since it comes with IP 67 rating, you don’t have to worry about weather. You can even customize it for light animations & battery performance using thier Unit 1 App.

• eMotion Max offers The 60GHz mmWave Radar Presence Sensor. Compared to traditional presence sensors, this one can detect very subtle movements, help you to take precise actions based on the position of the persons location. For example, you can switch on the lights when the user enters intended region. This can be helpful in exhibition displays & regular lighting. Area detection feature along with compatibility with Alexa, Google home & Home assistant makes this even better.

• Kinetic Technologies KTB8400, is a precision OptiComp? buck regulator with output voltage programmable, using I2C, between 0.6V to 3.345V. With fast PLL loop it maintains accurate switching frequency over-load changes. Though its in a compact package, it is RoHS and Green-compliant. Target market is consumer electronics & caters to the likes of smartphones, tablets, IoT devices.

• Nvidia’s RTX 5090 rumours suggest it to have super fast clock & super slim. Its rumoured that the base clock can reach 2.9GHz, which surpasses the current flagships boost clock of 2.52GHz. Its also claimed that NVIDIA achieved this inspite of reducing the size of RTX5090, to fit into most of the machines. If the leaked informations turned out to be true, it will be raining for NVIDIA when the launch happens.

Innovative Trend/News Snaps.?.?.

?Following announcements / news caught my attention.?

• AMD is racing against Intel in the race to produce glass substrate chips. According to Business Korea, AMD is planning to introduce glass substrates between 2025 and 2026. Glass substrates are highly valued for their ability to process vast amounts of data rapidly and their superior energy efficiency compared to traditional plastic substrate. Hence not just AMD & Intel, there are many players including Samsung, SKC & LG Innotek racing towards it.
• Siemens launches IC test & analysis tools for sub 5nm Process nodes. Siemens updated their Tessent IC tool with new additions which can help designers with more insights on sub 5nm nodes. With everyone gearing for AI target sub 5nm technology, its a much needed addition for the verification & validation teams.
• Scientist discover Moons caves, that can be converted into human bases. Its believed that these caves are created by Lava that flowed millions of years ago. Researchers analyzed radar measurements by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and put an end to the 50+ year old Lunar cave mystery. There could be thousands of these, which can act as natural shelters to astronauts.

• Japans TDK has developed new Solid State Battery material, which boasts 100X more energy density. TDK developed this for its CeraCharge, a next-generation rechargeable solid-state SMD battery with energy density of up to 1,000 Wh/L. The new battery technology targets size constrained applications like wearables & hearing aids. It also targets IoT application, as the edge devices can work for longer time than what’s possible now.
• OpenAI’s Strawberry?—?A new approach to the AI models to better the reasoning technology. Strawberry is reported as the code name for the project thats still work in progress. The main objective of this is to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform deep research, instead of just giving answers. In short, OpenAI wants the AI model to reason like human. However, the date for public launch or the plan to do so is not revealed yet. HR Task
• UK based AI semiconductor startup, Graphcore, was acquired by Softbank. As mentioned by The Scenarionist, companies are always exploring alternate methods & tech for meeting the stringent demands by AI on hardware. This acquisition, valued at $400million, will give much needed boost for Graphcore’s technology claiming 40% performance improvement.
• AMD claims hefty AI performance & said that within few years it expects to have notebook chips capable of running 30-billion-parameter large-language models locally at a speedy 100 tokens per second. It looks a tall ask, but its just a claim as of now. We need to wait how it spans out in years to come.
• Flying taxis may be available during French Olympics. France had approved flying taxi port on Seine river barge, bringing months of speculation to rest. However, still tests needs to be conducted & we have to wait how it pans out.

Innovative Company Snaps.?.?.

??A Company, which I found intriguing owing to their product/ market/other innovation??

Genomika- The company that wants to store data in DNA, within 3 years

What was the data generated by entire human population in 2023? Its 120 zettabytes or roughly enough data to fill ~150million 8TB NVM hard disks. At the safe estimates, this data is expected to grow 20% year on year. But considering AI’s roadmap, this estimate looks shaky & its definitely time to look for alternate modes of handling data.

This is where Genomika, based in Lithuania, comes in with their DNA Microfactory for Autonomous Archiving (DINAMIC) project to build a DNA-based storage drive. Funded by the European Commission through the European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder Program, this project includes several partners including Ultrasound Research Institute at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU URI).

One of Genomika’s founders, Ignas Galminas, says that DNA storage will not only solve the space problem but also reduce water consumption for data center cooling, reduce the need for rare earth metals to build SSDs, and improve the reliability and longevity of data archiving, among other things.

Another big problem with the current data centres its its massive contribution to the carbon footprint. Current estimates puts datacenter emission at 200 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

The project aims to build a storage drive that uses the four nucleobases (cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A], and thymine [T]) to stand in for the 1s and 0s found in current data storage technologies.

The company intends to save power & reduce cooling capacity significantly in the datacenters.

Initial deployment is planned to be in healthcare sector with applications like data management of a patient through their entire lifetime.

Genomika had already demonstrated storage capacity of DNA, by encoding Lithuania’s national anthem & 196 paintings by M.K.?iurlionis in DNA

However, for the DNA store device, the team mentions that they are not yet clear on the roadblocks ahead & said that their planned 3 years may have some surprises.

In all possibilities, this exciting technology, if succeeded, will present us with a great alternate to our ever growing data problem & will revolutionise compute world including AI & beyond

Innovation Methodology Snaps.?.?.

?Methodologies, often from existing inventions, to develop innovation mindset?

BIC Pen, shows how an timeless innovation can change countless lives

Once, the fountain pens was costing a fortune & had multiple issues including slow drying ink which seeped into the paper. These issues, primarily the cost, made writing constrained to a very small section of people till 19th century.

Ball pen was born, in 1930, when László Bíró, observed children playing with marbles in a puddle. He got the idea, when he saw the marbles left a trail of water in their wake.

As we had seen multiple times, most of the inventions involves “observing” something which others have missed. Along with his brother, Gy?rgy, a chemist, Bíró went on to design the ball pen. He understood that unless he changes the ink, he cannot achieve his dream.

He made his ink more viscous & invented a tip with a small ball that rotated freely to control the ink flow & also preventing it from drying. Capillary action replaced Gravity which was employed by fountain pens.

However, the cost of the Bíró’s pen was approximately $190 in todays value. The high cost pen was popular as it had won the contract with British Air Force. But the real game change happened, when entrepreneur Marcel Bich acquired the rights in 1944.

Bich created the BIC pens in relentless pursuit to reduce the cost & win the mass market.

Bich used Swiss watchmaking machines to create precise tiny stainless steel balls to be within a millimetre. He also chose to use plastic, which was rather a new technology in 1950’s. The pen had no moving parts, it was transparent, cheap, easy to grip & wont roll off the table. The ink was also a special recipe which maximised the capillary action.

The BIC pen was launched in 1905 with a price tag of just $2. It was designed so well that it almost remains the same even today.

The testament to the timeless innovation came in September 2006. The Bic Cristal was declared the best selling pen in the world after the 100 billionth was sold.

A pen that was innovated in 1950, which took risk of adopting plastic instead of metal, shows all the key ingredients for innovation.

The most important outcome of the BIC pen was not its sales crossing 100 Billion units. But the steep rise in literacy rate around the world as shown in the title image. Everyone was able to afford this mass produced miracle which was inspired from marbles on a puddle.

Bich did not achieve this by just creating the replica of what Bíró invented.

Bich adopted a process of “creating” an attribute, to his offerings, which imparts impact & enhanced value, thereby fuelling growth.- The definition I gave for innovation in the start.

Fun Fact?: There exists a forever writing Inkless pen, which uses a patented metallic alloy called ethergraf. This writing tip oxidizes the paper & the trail left seems to be mimicking “pencil”. And few of the reviews even said, it shouldn’t be called Pen.

The One Topic I Pondered.?.?.

Avalanche of AI Mobile Phones, including for gaming, is on the?way…

A Brief look at the AI based phones & their capabilities

Just couple of months ago, I wrote about the avalanche of AI based personal computers coming into the market. Now its the mobile phone’s turn. Mobile phones, with SoC’s that can run GenAI models efficiently with a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit), are getting cast with AI in OS level. More than 200 Million of these AI phones are expected ship on 2024.

Mobile phone’s AI features will offer you real time translation, can plan & get keypoints from meetings, allow you to do magic with photos, videos & even give instant knowledge on almost anything, by just showing it to your phones camera.?

We will go through some interesting features, new phone lineups, future & some general thoughts on this new capability.?

To read about both this article in detail, please check out the on "The One Topic I Pondered" section in my recent weekly substack newlsetter.

Final Note. . .

Thats all for this week. . .

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