Welcome to the April 17, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Intel Unveils Largest Neuromorphic System
• Technology Helps Speed Up Tourist Entry into U.S.
• Microsoft Ups Ante in AI Race with China Through Stake in Abu Dhabi Firm
• Security Vulnerability in Browser Interface Allows Computer Access via Graphics Card
• Terahertz Waves Curved To Avoid Blockage
• Sony, Nature Create Award for Female Researchers
• Energy-Guzzling AI is also the Future of Energy Savings
• Cyborg Cockroach Swarm Controlled by Computers
• Instagram Tests Chatbot Versions of Influencers
• Residents of G7 Countries Uncomfortable with Humanoid Robots
• Millions of Gamers Advance Biomedical Research
• AI Chip Trims Energy Budget
• Tiny Tech Consumes Less Power Measuring Qubits

Intel Unveils Largest Neuromorphic System

Intel announced today it has built the world's largest neuromorphic system. Codenamed Hala Point, the research prototype system supports up to 1.15 billion neurons and 128 billion synapses distributed over 140,544 neuromorphic processing cores consuming a maximum of 2,600 watts of power. Said Intel’s Mike Davies, Hala Point “combines deep learning efficiency with novel brain-inspired learning and optimization capabilities.”
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Technology Helps Speed Up Tourist Entry into U.S.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) Mobile Passport Control app is intended to speed up the entry process for travelers, including families. The app allows individuals who have uploaded their information and photos to go to a separate line for entry processing. For families, a CBP officer will take a photo of one member, and after the image is recognized by a computer, it provides the information needed to process the entire group.
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Microsoft Ups Ante in AI Race with China Through Stake in Abu Dhabi Firm

Microsoft will invest $1.5 billion in G42, a tech company based in Abu Dhabi and backed by the UAE government. The deal includes an intergovernmental pact to ensure AI security and involves the creation of "a skilled and diverse AI workforce" for the UAE and a $1-billion fund for developers. G42 will use Microsoft's cloud services for its AI applications.
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Security Vulnerability in Browser Interface Allows Computer Access via Graphics Card

Researchers at Austria's Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) demonstrated three side-channel attacks on graphics cards using the WebGPU browser interface, through which they gained information about data, keystrokes, and encryption keys on other people’s computers. Said TU Graz's Lukas Giner (pictured), "With our work, we want to clearly point out to browser manufacturers that they need to deal with access to the GPU in the same way as with other resources that affect security and privacy."
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Terahertz Waves Curved To Avoid Blockage

A team of researchers from Brown and Rice universities have developed a method of curving terahertz waves around solid objects that would otherwise block them. The researchers created transmitters able to manipulate the strength, intensity, and timing of the resulting electromagnetic waves. They used these transmitters to create a terahertz signal that follows a curved trajectory around an obstacle, instead of being blocked by it.
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Sony, Nature Create Award for Female Researchers

Sony Group Corp. and Nature magazine have announced the Sony Women in Technology Award with Nature, an international prize recognizing female technology researchers. The first three award recipients will be announced early next year, when each will receive $250,000 in research funding. Said Nature editor-in-chief Magdalena Skipper (pictured), "We can provide a global platform to celebrate the work of emerging women researchers and engineers who may otherwise go unheralded."
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Energy-Guzzling AI is also the Future of Energy Savings

AI datacenters could account for up to a quarter of U.S. power usage by 2030, up from 4% currently, according to the CEO of chip-design firm Arm. However, AI could be an important tool in identifying potential energy savings. Schneider Electric CEO Peter Herweck said buildings' energy consumption could be cut 15% to 25% during the next four years with the help of AI.
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Cyborg Cockroach Swarm Controlled by Computers

Researchers at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University demonstrated that a swarm of 20 remote-controlled cyborg cockroaches can travel to a location in a group, navigating desert-like landscapes without colliding with obstacles or each other. The cockroaches are controlled via backpacks containing a battery, minicomputer, and an antenna that communicates with a central computer, which determines the direction of the swarm.
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Instagram Tests Chatbot Versions of Influencers

Instagram is testing Creator AI, a program that would enable popular influencers to interact with fans through AI. Sources say Creator AI is a chatbot that will talk with fans via direct messages and potentially comments, mimicking the influencer's "voice" to help creators respond to messages and comments. Creator AI will send messages automatically, disclosing, at least initially, that they are generated by AI, and allow creators to choose the data used to copy their voice and dictate responses to specific questions.
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Residents of G7 Countries Uncomfortable with Humanoid Robots

A United Robotics survey of close to 8,000 residents of the U.S., France, Canada, Italy, and Germany found that almost 80% are concerned humanoid robots will take away jobs. Another 71% are worried such robots will assume a human role in social interactions, and nearly two-thirds (60%) of respondents on average don't want humanoid robots to have human characteristics.
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Millions of Gamers Advance Biomedical Research

A team led by researchers at Canada's McGill University used 4.5 million players of Borderlands Science, a mini-game within the Borderlands 3 video game, to help reconstruct the evolutionary histories of bacteria living in the human gut. As part of one of the largest global citizen science projects, players aligned rows of tiles representing the genetic building blocks of different microbes. McGill's Jérôme Waldispühl said, "In half a day, the Borderlands Science players collected five times more data about microbial DNA sequences than our earlier game, Phylo, had collected over a 10-year period."
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AI Chip Trims Energy Budget

A microchip developed by researchers at China's Tsinghua University and the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology uses photons instead of electrons to run AI tasks with greater energy efficiency. The researchers took a hybrid approach, incorporating both clusters of diffractive units that can compress data for large-scale input and output, and interferometer arrays for reconfigurable computation. The Taichi microchip distributes computing across numerous chiplets operating in parallel and possesses 13.96 million parameters, mimicking synapses connecting neurons in the human brain.
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Tiny Tech Consumes Less Power Measuring Qubits

Microscopic devices developed by researchers at Finland's Aalto University can measure quantum bits (qubits) while helping to evade the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The bolometers measure a photon's number or power and are up to 100 times smaller than conventional amplifier-based devices. Said Aalto's Mikko Möttönen, "We found these bolometers accurate enough for single-shot readout, free of added quantum noise, and they consume 10,000 times less power than the typical amplifiers."
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