Samsung Joins OpenPower

Samsung has joined Google, Mellanox, Nvidia and other tech companies as part of IBM’s OpenPower Consortium. The OpenPower Consortium is working toward giving developers access to an expanded and open set of server technologies to improve data centre hardware using chip designs based on the IBM Power architecture.

Last summer, IBM announced the formation of the consortium, following its decision to license the Power architecture. The OpenPower Foundation, the actual entity behind the consortium, opened up the Power architecture technology, including specs, firmware and software under a license. Firmware is offered as open source. Originally, OpenPower was the brand of a range of System p servers from IBM that utilized the Power5 CPU. Samsung’s products currently utilize both x86 and ARM-based processors.

The intention of the consortium is to develop advanced servers, networking, storage and GPU-acceleration technology for new products. The four priority technical areas for development are system software, application software, open server development platform and hardware architecture. Along with its announcement of Samsung’s membership, the organization said that Gordon MacKean, Google’s engineering director of the platforms group, will now become chairman of the group. Nvidia has said it will use its graphics processors on Power-based hardware, and Tyan will be releasing a Power-based server, the first one outside IBM.

Source

Spray-On Battery Coming To The Office

Researchers at Rice University in Houston have created a prototype spray-on battery that could allow engineers to rethink the way portable electronics are developed.

The rechargeable battery boasts similar electrical characteristics to the lithium ion batteries that power almost every mobile gadget, but it can be applied in layers to almost any surface with a conventional airbrush, said Neelam Singh, a Rice University graduate student who led a team working on the technology for more than a year.

Current lithium ion batteries are almost all variations on the same basic form: an inflexible block with electrodes at one end. Because they cannot easily be shaped, they sometimes restrict designers, particularly when it comes to small gadgets with curved surfaces, but the Rice prototypes could change that.

“Today, we only have a few form factors of batteries, but this battery can be fabricated to fill the space available,” said Singh.

The battery is sprayed on in five layers: two current collectors sandwich a cathode, a polymer separator and an anode.

“It was difficult optimizing the components in the form of a paint,” said Singh. Initial versions were sensitive to moisture and would peel off, but the addition of a polymer and a heat-sealing step solved this problem.

The result is a battery that can be sprayed on to plastics, metal and ceramics.

.

Source…