Dr. Henry Samueli, Broadcom co-founder and chief technology officer gave his annual discourse, The Story of Broadcom How a UCLA Professor Became a Successful Entrepreneur on Thursday, March 6 in the McDonnell Douglas Engineering Auditorium as part of the Winter Entrepreneurship Seminar Series hosted by the department of engineering. As an alumnus and former professor of electrical engineering at UCLA, Dr. Samueli continues to vocally and financially support the engineering sciences of UCLA and, more visibly, of UCI.

Broadcom, which is headquartered in Irvine, has designed and developed semiconductors for the electronics communication industry since 1991. It was a point of pride for the co-founder to state that nearly 99.98 percent of all internet traffic crosses at least one Broadcom chip.

To introduce the background of telecommunications, Dr. Samueli stated the fact that there are more connected devices today than people, with over 7 billion connected devices today. Yet, Dr. Samueli maintained that none of this technology would have developed without the invention of the semiconductor, which he believes has created more impact on society, than any other invention in the past 100 years.

A semiconductor is the core material of all electronic circuits, presently composed of silicon (hence the Bay area nickname, Silicon Valley), which works simultaneously as a conductor and insulator of electricity. Their function was critical to the invention of transistors in the 1950s, which expedited the relay of information through electronic waves and current. Without these advancements, the modern computer would have never come into existence.

Accompanied by friendly graphs and slideshow animations, Dr. Samueli explained the incredible pace of semiconductor advancements, which are patterned on processor chips with increasing efficiency and parvitude.

I dont know if there is any industry in the world, at any time, of any kind, that has seen a factor of a million improvement, ever, or even in a 40 year window.

Yet he did not believe the exponential growth could sustain itself for much longer.

The bottom line is Moores law is slowing down, and coming to an end, he stated. My estimate is in the next 10 to 15 years.

He continued to explain limitations and inventions in the 80s and 90s and at one point elicited laughter from the audience, when his slideshow interjected with the tinny beeps and ringing of the notoriously slow internet modem dial-up connection process.

When people saw that brick wall of limitations, thats kind of when Broadcom entered the market, Dr. Samueli said.

Read more from the original source:

Samueli Shares Success Story

Hoboken, NJ (PRWEB) March 11, 2014

Stevens Institute of Technology announces the relaunch of Nexus, the universitys online research magazine for the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering & Science, http://research.stevens.edu/.

Nexus is a place for people interested in learning more about engineering research and news in four major research areas including: energy & environment; systems & security; nano-technology & multiscale; and biomedical & health. The Spring issue is the first to showcase a new site design thats more visual and user-friendly and includes more technical research articles than before.

Readers want and need to see a more complete picture of how much good work is happening in the School of Engineering and Science, says Michael Bruno, Feiler Chair Professor and Dean, School of Engineering and Science. Nexus serves as the window into our research for the campus community, our external partners, journalists, and our alumni.

Each issue focuses on a topic or domain area that is of current national/global interest, or that highlights an emerging area of strength within the School. The Spring issue is centered on the issue of information assurance or privacy and the work of Stevens researchers in this area.

Readers will fine the new Nexus chock full of useful and interesting information about our research programs and people.

This online newsletter offers readers:

Don't worry, if you've already signed up for Nexus, you'll keep receiving it each quarter. If you haven't signed up for it yet, you can do so here: http://research.stevens.edu/subscribe-nexus.

A Sneak Peak into Nexus Spring 2014 Issue

As the digital age has transformed our lives for the better, connecting us in ways unimaginable only 10 years ago, so, too, has it ushered in an era of widespread concern for the safety and security of these connections, and the privacy on which so much of our personal and professional lives depend.

Read more:

Stevens Institute of Technologys School of Engineering Relaunches its Online Research Magazine

UC Riverside and University of Manchester researchers combine graphene and copper in hopes of shrinking electronics

By Sean Nealon on March 11, 2014

Pradyumna Goli, left, and Alexander Balandin in Balandin's Nano-Device Laboratory.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) Researchers have discovered that creating a graphene-copper-graphene sandwich strongly enhances the heat conducting properties of copper, a discovery that could further help in the downscaling of electronics.

The work was led by Alexander A. Balandin, a professor of electrical engineering at the Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside and Konstantin S. Novoselov, a professor of physics at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Balandin and Novoselov are corresponding authors for the paper just published in the journal Nano Letters. In 2010, Novoselov shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Andre Geim for their discovery of graphene.

In the experiments, the researchers found that adding a layer of graphene, a one-atom thick material with highly desirable electrical, thermal and mechanical properties, on each side of a copper film increased heat conducting properties up to 24 percent.

This enhancement of coppers ability to conduct heat could become important in the development of hybrid copper graphene interconnects for electronic chips that continue to get smaller and smaller, said Balandin, who in 2013 was awarded the MRS Medal from the Materials Research Society for discovery of unusual heat conduction properties of graphene.

Whether the heat conducting properties of copper would improve by layering it with graphene is an important question because copper is the material used for semiconductor interconnects in modern computer chips. Copper replaced aluminum because of its better electrical conductivity.

Downscaling the size of transistors and interconnects and increasing the number of transistors on computer chips has put an enormous strain on coppers interconnect performance, to the point where there is little room for further improvement. For that reason there is a strong motivation to develop hybrid interconnect structures that can better conduct electrical current and heat.

From left: (1) copper before any processing, (2) copper after thermal processing; (3) copper after adding graphene.

Read more:

Creating a Graphene-Metal Sandwich to Improve Electronics