Nano Sensors

Nano sensors are extremely small level integrated sensors which are used to detect changes in physical parameters like temperature, pressure etc. on very small scale.

Nano sensors contain materials which are called nanomaterials and which do all the magic at nano scale level or nano particle level. Some of the examples of nanomaterials are Fullerence, Carbon nanotubes (used in manufacturing of small electronic components like transistors).

These sensors are the future of sensors that we are using currently in our daily life. Conventional sensors are quite big and less efficient in comparison with the nano sensors.

Because of their extremely small size nano sensors can directly interact with molecules and detect the changes occurs in them.

Let’s talk a little about fabrication of transistors which is fundamental component of all the I.C. (Integrated Circuits). We have seen the size of transistor changing form few inches (Triode) to 10 nm (Used in latest processors like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, Samsung’s Exynos 8895 and many more) since the transistor first invented in 1948 at Bell Laboratories.

There is a law regarding the size of transistor that could be possible to reduce after every 2 years and this is called Moore’s law. Moore’s law states that “Number of transistor in a dense Integrated Circuit doubles approximately every two years”.

Carbon nanotube field effect transistor (CNFET) refers to a transistor that uses a carbon nanotube/s to transfer the electron from source/emitter to drain/collector of the transistor where this tube works as a channel inspite of using bulk Silicon/ Germanium. First component of this type was first demonstrated in 1998.

Samsung, TSMC, Intel and other big manufacturers of chips are working on the 7nm fabrication technology which will see in few days.

Applications of Nano Sensors

  • Biomedical Science (to detect the beginning of dangerous diseases like Cancer)
  • Extremely small size embedded systems
  • Space exploration
  • Research labs. Etc.

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Intel Atom

It’s a brand name for a line of Ultra low voltage IA32 (“Short for Intel Architecture, 32 bit”, some times also called i386 is a 32 bit version of x86 instruction set architecture) and x86-64 (64-bit instruction set architecture) micro processors by Intel corporation. Mainly used in netbooks, embedded applications from healthcare to advanced robotics and mobile internet devices (MIDs). Originally designed in 45 nm CMOS technology.

It’s 1st generation processors were based on the “Bonnel” micro-architecture.

In 2012, Intel launched the 64 bit Centerton family of Atom CPUs designed specifically for servers.

In 2013, Intel launched 22 nm successor to Centerton, code named Avoton.

Intel Atom is direct successor of the Intel A10 and A110 low power microprocessors (Codenamed Stealey) 90 nm process.

Atom processors became available to system manufacturers in 2008. The Diamondville and Pineview Atom is used microprocessor mini series, Asus N10, Lenovo Idea Pad S10, Acer Aspire One, Sony VAIO M-series, Dell Inspiron mini series, Samsung NC10.

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Samsung Exynos Series 5 SoC (7872)

Samsung has launched the Exynos 5 series 7872 SoC recently. This SoC is not as good as Series 9 9810, which is designed for high end smartphones. It has been designed for the medium level smartphones which would be in budget of most of the people.

Fabrication: It’s based on 14 nm FinFET fabrication process which gives it high density and low power consumption as compared to previously launched SoC in its series.

CPU: Exynos 7872 has Hexacore CPU consisting two Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2 GHz and four Cortex A53 clocked at 1.6 GHz to provide it a balance between performance and power saving mode.

GPU: It has the ARM’s Mali G-72 which is not the latest but would provide a descent performance in mid range smartphones.

Modem: Exynos 7872 comes with LTE Cat 7 modem which is capable of 300 Mbps download speed and 150 Mbps upload speed.

Camera: Exynos 7872 can support 21.7 MP front as well as rear side cameras which is good for the mobiles in the mid range budget.

Video: It can record upto 1920x 1200 pixels at 120 fps (Frames Per Second) full HD video.

Bluetooth: It comes with Bluetooth 5.0 which is the latest Bluetooth version in smartphones.

Security: It is capable of handling high end security features like iris scanner.

Overall, It is a good quality SoC from Samsung for the mid range smartphones which you would see in the series of phones by the companies like Meizu, Lenovo etc.

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Increase in transistor count of GPUs (Graphics Processing Units)

A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and later memory to accelerate the building of images to display.

In recent years, due to advancement in technology, there has been huge increase in the GPU transistor number count which is making the Moore’s law possible even in that much small area.

Here is the list of some GPUs with their transistor count, release date, manufacturing company and fabrication size.

  • NV3 – 3,500,000 – 1997 – NVIDIA – 350 nm
  • R100 – 30,000,000 – 2000 – AMD – 180 nm
  • NV38 – 135,000,000 – 2003 – NVIDIA – 130 nm
  • G86 Tesla – 210,000,000 – 2007 – NVIDIA – 80 nm
  • RV710 – 242,000,000 – 2008 – AMD – 55 nm
  • Cedar RV810 – 292,000,000 – 2010 – AMD – 40 nm
  • Caicos RV910 – 370,000,000 – 2011 – AMD – 40 nm
  • GK107 Kepler – 1,270,000,000 – 2012 – NVIDIA – 28 nm
  • Bonaire – 2,080,000,000 – 2013 – AMD – 28 nm
  • GP106 Pascal – 4,400,000,000 – 2016 – NVIDIA – 16 nm
  • GV102 Pascal – 12,500,000,000 – 2016 – NVIDIA – 16 nm
  • GV100 Volta – 21,100,000,000 – 2017 – NVIDIA – 12 nm

So, Now you can imagine technology has reached upto which end and how fast it is still growing………

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Increase in transistor count of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)

A Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing.

Here is the list of some FPGA’s with their transistor count, release date, manufacturing company and fabrication size.

  • Virtex – 70,000,000 – 1997 – Xilinx
  • Virtex II – 350,000,000 – 2000 – Xilinx – 130 nm
  • Virtex 4 – 1,000,000,000 – 2004 – Xilinx – 90 nm
  • Stratix IV – 2,500,000,000 – 2008 – Altera – 40 nm
  • Stratix V – 3,800,000,000 – 2011 – Altera – 28 nm
  • Arria 10 – 5,300,000,000 – 2014 – Altera – 20 nm
  • Stratix Family device – 17,000,000,000 – 2017 – Intel (Formerly Altera) – 14 nm

Special property of FPGA is that we can designed them after purchasing them according to our need which makes them highly customizable.

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