Scientific Computing

Who is leading in terms of U.S. patents? Asia. While U.S. patent grants rebounded by 4% in 2024 after a four-year decline, the real story is who’s driving innovation: Samsung Electronics maintained its crown for the third straight year with 6,377 patents, TSMC claimed second place with 3,989 patents, according to IFI Claims’ roundup of…

“The next frontier of AI is physical AI. Imagine a large language model, but instead of processing text, it processes its surroundings. Instead of taking a question as a prompt, it takes a request. Instead of producing text, it produces action tokens.” — Jensen Huang, CEO NVIDIA For too long, AI has been trapped in…

In this week’s R&D Market Pulse, the $29.1 billion Constellation-Calpine mega-merger promises to reshape U.S. energy, the Commerce Department awards a third CHIPS for America facility to Arizona State University, and new AI export restrictions put China on notice. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s xAI rolls out a consumer app, BlackRock withdraws from a major climate initiative,…

For decades, the Nyquist-Shannon theorem—a foundational principle of signal processing—dictated that fully sampling a signal at or above twice its highest frequency was essential for capturing critical information. Now, a Pennsylvania startup called Lightscline suggests we may be entering a “post-Nyquist era.” According to a recent Nature Scientific Reports paper, the company’s neural-network-based software, inspired…

Nevada National Security Sites’ Electromagnetic Spectrum Management System (ESMS) offers a solution for controlling radio frequencies in sensitive areas. It identifies and “manages” unwanted signals, effectively silencing them while allowing authorized communications to pass through. This is achieved by removing the modulation of hostile signals, rendering them unintelligible while preserving the intended data and voice communication…

Leica Biosystems, a provider of anatomic and digital pathology solutions, has announced a strategic investment in Indica Labs, a company specializing in AI-powered digital pathology software. The collaboration aims to advance AI-enabled companion diagnostics (CDx) and support breakthroughs in biomarker analysis for cancer and other conditions. As part of the agreement, Leica Biosystems and Indica…

China Steel Corporation (CSC) and its co-developer, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), developed the new Digital Twin System for Tapping Process, which is helping transform the steel manufacturing landscape through automation and digitalization. This comprehensive system, featuring a real-time digital twin model, integrates monitoring, predictive maintenance, and process optimization to boost productivity, reduce costs, and enhance…

Sandia National Laboratories has partnered with leading research institutions to tackle a potential energy crisis driven by the increasing energy demands of artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies. Jeffrey Nelson, a principal investigator at Sandia, highlighted the issue’s urgency: “Computing alone is projected to consume a significant portion of the total planetary energy production…

A partnership between the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is streamlining inspections of nuclear reactor components and materials by using advanced algorithms and advanced imaging technology. Initially focused on additively manufactured nuclear parts, the collaboration has expanded to include inspections of nuclear fuel, enabling quicker and safer evaluations. Key…

According to the November 2024 TOP500 rankings, Lawrence Livermore’s El Capitan is the most powerful supercomputer. In this list, derived from the TOP500 supercomputer ranking, Frontier and Aurora round out the top three slots. These systems range from newly installed exascale powerhouses to long-established machines that are continuously evolving. All performance results come from the Linpack…

Over the past couple of years, the world’s most powerful supercomputers have experienced a sizable leap in performance. The combined processing power of the computers on the TOP500 list surged from 5.24 exaflops in June 2023 to 11.72 exaflops in November 2024, representing a 123.7% increase. Meanwhile, the anticipated Colossus supercomputer from Elon Musk’s xAI—if…

MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Precision Photon Synchronization System represents a significant step forward in quantum networking. It offers a practical and efficient solution for enabling quantum communication across vast distances. By ensuring that entangled photons can arrive at their destinations with extreme precision, the system helps overcome one of the significant challenges in establishing global quantum…

The AI boom is sparking a potential energy crisis. Data centers, housing the powerful GPU-enabled servers that fuel AI’s growth, are projected to consume 12% of US electricity by 2028, as Reuters recently noted. Prominent tech firms like xAI, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI are pouring billions into GPU-based “mega-clusters” involving 100,000 or more GPUs. In addition,…

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is showcasing the ion trap chip developed by IonQ, a quantum computing and networking firm. This is the first time a quantum computing company has been featured at the exchange. The ion trap, a foundational component of IonQ’s quantum computers, is on display in the NYSE lobby, emphasizing the…

The life sciences and analytical instruments industry has been on a roller coaster for the past several years. When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, businesses rapidly expanded to meet the moment. But four years later, the market is decidedly unusual, for lack of a better term. Many analytical instruments organizations are rife with…

Semiconductor-based quantum processors are driving rapid advancements in computational power, with companies like Google and IBM leading the charge. Recent reports highlight increasing interest in quantum computing as a transformative force in finance, energy, and other sectors. Several key developments underscore the importance of cutting-edge semiconductor fabrication and design in enabling these next-generation devices: 1.…

As 2024 nears its end, global R&D-driven industries are navigating a mix of policy shifts, strategic realignments, and accelerating innovation. A proposed policy change could transform how U.S. companies expense their R&D investments, while manufacturing floors are seeing surging AI integration with over a third of companies successfully deploying the technology. In automotive, GM is…

The irony isn’t lost on Google’s leadership: even the architects of artificial intelligence find themselves navigating its transformative effects. “You know, things are never quiet,” remarked Shweta Maniar, global director of healthcare and life sciences at Google Cloud in a recent interview, recalling how Silicon Valley giants vowed to disrupt healthcare among other industries. “I…

Each year, the top 2,500 or so international R&D spenders collectively invest more than $1 trillion in R&D. The roster of R&D heavyweights is shaping up to look broadly similar to prior years, but NVIDIA is poised to crack into the top 15 given its recent AI-driven growth. If anything, NVIDIA’s ascent into the ranks…

Life sciences executives are entering 2025 with data-driven optimism, according to Deloitte’s newly released “2025 Life Sciences Outlook.” Survey findings from 150 global C-suite executives show that 75% remain upbeat about the year ahead, with 68% anticipating revenue increases and 57% expecting margin expansions. Two key factors emerge from executive interviews: enhanced clarity following the…

Google’s unveiling of the Willow quantum processor could go down in history as a big moment in the pursuit of fault-tolerant quantum computing. A BBC article called the advance “mind-boggling.” And in many respects, it is. The processor completed a specialized computation in five minutes that would theoretically take today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years—a…

While some R&D sectors declined, others expanded. GM sold an EV battery plant and is the second biggest automaker withdrawing from China. At the same time, Nvidia expanded in Vietnam, Amazon built an AI-based supercomputer, and OpenAI joined Anduril to boost the U.S. military’s drone technology. The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending…

While the term “biotechnology” was coined in 1919, “techbio” dates back roughly a century after that. Around 2019, the VC firm Artis Ventures set up a venture capital fund named Artis techbio with the aim of uniting software, computational biology, and drug development into a cohesive framework. The ambition behind this idea has sometimes surpassed…

For Avandra CEO and founder Ryan Tarzy, the potential of AI in healthcare is personal. He lost his father to pancreatic cancer, a disease often caught too late in the United States. At the recent Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) conference, he encountered a telling example of what emerging medical tech can achieve. “At…

A good number of organizations rushing to deploy AI in pharmaceutical and genomics research have their priorities backward. They need not only a solid data infrastructure but also true data savviness before forging ahead with deep learning or large language models, argues Stavros Papadopoulos, CEO and founder of TileDB, the developer of data platform for…