Science &Â Technology Current Affairs
World’s First 1000-processor Microchip Created in US University
- A team of scientists from the US has created the world’s first microchip that has 1000 processors and is thought to be the fastest chip designed in a university lab on June 19, 2016.
- This energy-efficient microchip is named as the -KiloCore’ chip and has a maximum computation rate of 1.78 trillion instructions per second and contains 621 million transistors.
- Each processor core can run its own small programme independently of the others, which is a fundamentally more flexible approach than the Sihgle-Instruction- Multiple-Data approaches utilised by processors such as Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).
Chinese Supercomputer Emerged as the World’s Fastest Supercomputer
- A new Chinese supercomputer, the Sunway TaihuLight, emerged as – number one on the latest TOP-500 list of supercomputers released on June 20, 2016 at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) held in Frankfurt (Germany).
- TaihuLight has one SW26010 chip, a new version of the ShenWei processor that produces speeds of 3 teraflop/s with 260 cores. This is a 1.45GHz 64-bit RISC processor.
- The supercomputer was developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC). Top-500 rankings are based on the Unpack benchmark, which requires each cluster to solve a dense system of linear equations.
- TaihuLight is currently up and running at the National Supercomputing Center in the dty of Wuxi. The system will be used for various research and engineering work, in areas such as climate, weather & earth systems modeling, life science research, advanced manufacturing, and data analytics.
Solar Dome of India Project Nominated for Display in International Expo
- Scientist and solar power expert Santi Pada Gon Chaudhuri’s solar dome project nominated for display in the Astana Expo 2017 on June 13, 2016 that will be held in Kazakhstan.
- The Indian Trade Promotion Organisation, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and other departments are setting-up the National Pavilion at the Astana Expo 2017, Kazakhstan that will focus on Future Energy.
- The main Theme of the Expo is to showcase cutting edge technologies. The Solar Dome will not only serve to raise awareness about solar energy, it will also act as a museum displaying various usages of the unconventional energy as well as a tourist spot.