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Smart energy management maximizes performance in the data center while minimizing waste, and in the process turns energy into the newest IT asset. Look for most data centers worldwide to start using demand-side energy management over the next few years. R.C.J.

Sentilla claims that its demand-side energy management can monitor every device in the data center with no extra hardware to be installed. Using artificial intelligence (AI) inference engines, Sentilla Energy Manager tracks energy consumption at a data center to within 2 percent of actual, as well as provides savings of up to 40 percent by identifying where energy is being wasted.
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Polymer filled silicon waveguides promise to bring photonics for CMOS chips, boosting their speed to 100s of GHz. Look for silicon photonics to blossom over the next few years. R.C.J.

Electro-optic-polymer-filled silicon waveguides could propagate optical signals on CMOS chips at up to 100 GHz, according to GigOptix-Helix AG, a subsidiary of GigOptix Inc. The company Wednesday (March 10) announced a $500,000 contract to prove the concept for a European Union project called the Silicon-Organic Hybrid Fabrication Platform for Integrated Circuits (SOFI). The SOFI program is funding seven research teams from four countries for three years. Each SOFI research team will be focusing on fabricating photonic modulators using optical waveguides on CMOS chip
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Recently perfected optical interconnection technologies will accelerate multi-core microprocessors to 100-GHz–20-times faster than today–plus will lighten mobile devices to about half their current weight, by obsoleting the heavy copper wire used for routing electronic signals around on printed circuit boards (PCBs) and even between cores inside microchips. Look for all-optical electronic devices within five years. R.C.J.

Optical fibers already carry the fastest communications signals over the Internet and between servers and supercomputers at high-performance data centers. By encoding electronic communications in the language of light, the higher frequencies and wider bandwidth of optical signals not only increases performance, but obsoletes heavy, bulky copper-based interconnects in favor of small, lightweight optical fibers. Each year, IBM announces a few more elements in its nanophotonic toolkit, including on-chip silicon-laser resonators, modulators, waveguides and switches. Plus, it has demonstrated a complete chip-to-chip optical bus. Now IBM claims it has crafted the final tool in its nanophotonics kit — a tiny germanium optical receiver called an avalanche photodetector — that will enable it to realize the dream of integrated CMOS optical interconnects.

The new 40G bps photodetector can be integrated on the edge of processors to receive optical signals sent between chips instead of using copper traces on printed circuit boards. And eventually, it will be integrated on the top layer of the microprocessor itself to facilitate lightning-fast communications between cores on the same chip, thus eliminating the need for copper wires inside and outside future electronic devices. By eliminating the copper traces on printed circuit boards and the copper wires inside the chips themselves, a major reduction can be made in the weight of mobile devices today.
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Energy stored in a chemical does not leak off like the charge on a battery, making these new fuel-coated nanotube materials a natural for long-term storage of electricity, such as for remote “emergency” sensors or for one-use applications such as arming a missile. Look for fuel-treated nanotube applications in about five years. R.C.J.

MIT researchers are using fuel-coated carbon nanotubes as “fuses” for thermowave electrical power sources, which store energy like a battery but promise an unlimited shelf life. Thermowave power ignites its fuel to produce electricity through a newly discovered technique that combines nanotechnology with combustion waves, a phenomenon discovered more than a century ago. In a process much like lighting a dynamite fuse, igniting one end of a fuel-coated nanotube causes a burn down its length that simultaneously produces enough electrical current to be used as power.
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Who says 3-D has to be expensive? An autostereoscopic adapter for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch converts the handheld into a stereoscopic display for $50, plus a free app lets you take 3-D photos, too. Look for 3D photography to take off over the next few years. R.C.J.

If you are not ready shell out a premium price for a Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG or Mitsubishi 3-D TV, all of which are slated for 2010 debuts, then why not get started with an autostereoscopic adapter for your iPhone or iPod Touch that only costs $50? (Soon to be available for laptop screens, too.) The Wazabee 3DeeShell autostereoscopic adapter from Spatial View (Toronto) consists of a lenticular lens that fits over the display to divert two images in a stereoscopic pair to the right and left eyes. And voila — instant 3-D viewing and without the dorky glasses!
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