This superb long read gives you a summary of the ten breakthrough tech innovations which will define 2024 and then allows you to click through to a long, well researched piece on each of the 10 technologies. Rather than doing a bad job of summarizing the 10 technologies (and reducing your incentive for clicking through to this outstanding long read), we are summarizing the three technologies discussed in this piece which we were least aware of.
First up are super-efficient solar cells: “Solar power is being rapidly deployed around the world, and it’s key to global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. But most of the sunlight that hits today’s panels isn’t being converted into electricity. Adding a layer of tiny crystals could make solar panels more efficient.”
These tiny crystals are called perovskite tandem solar cells. “In the decade that scientists have been toying with perovskite solar technology, it has continued to best its own efficiency records, which measure how much of the sunlight that hits the cell is converted into electricity. Perovskites absorb different wavelengths of light from those absorbed by silicon cells, which account for 95% of the solar market today. When silicon and perovskites work together in tandem solar cells, they can utilize more of the solar spectrum, producing more electricity per cell.”
The second new innovation that we read about in this piece is called chiplets: “It’s getting devilishly hard to make transistors smaller—the trend that defines Moore’s Law and has driven progress in computing for decades. Engineers must now find new ways to make computers faster and more efficient. Chiplets are small, specialized chips that can be linked together to do everything a conventional chip does, and more.”
Reading up a little bit more on this intriguing innovation pointed us to a piece which explains chiplets for the layman: “A chiplet represents a miniature integrated circuit (IC) with a distinct set of functions. Its purpose is to merge seamlessly with other chiplets on an interposer within a single package. The fundamental concept of chiplet technology involves disassembling a system-on-a-chip into its elemental functional components. Complex-function chips can be deconstructed into chiplets, each representing separate elements such as computational processors, graphics units, AI accelerators, I/O [input/output] functions, and various other chip functionalities. A system composed of chiplets resembles an SoC on a module. In the future, the idea is that there will be interoperable, mix-and-match chiplet components sourced from various providers. The arrangement of chiplets can be likened to a versatile “Lego-like” assembly, offering numerous advantages over conventional system-on-chip designs….” (source: https://resources.pcb.cadence.
The third innovation which caught our eye – and made us the happiest – was Twitter killers: “Elon Musk bought the site now known as X in 2022, and virtually nothing about it has been the same since. He fired most of the staff and dispensed with content moderation, scaring off advertisers and users alike. Now, as alternatives like Bluesky, Threads, and others gain ground, the central town square has given way to private rooms.”
Basically, it appears that some of us have had enough of Tweeting and now want private conversations on social media. Given the extent of damage caused by social media to the social fabric of the world’s great democracies, we eagerly look forward to alternatives to toxic social discourse finding traction in India.
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