Super-realistic computer games which will feature human faces as they actually look are at most two years away, developers have told the BBC. At present, developers have not been able to create games characters with photo-realistic faces and expressions. David Kunkler producer for Obsidian Entertainment and makers of Neverwinter Nights 2, said games are currently in an "uncanny valley." "They look strange – they're too close to real, but not quite real," he added.
A chip with 80 processing cores and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflop) has been unveiled by Intel. The Teraflop chip is not a commercial release but could point the way to more powerful processors, said the firm. The chip achieves performance on a piece of silicon no bigger than a fingernail that 11 years ago required a machine with 10,000 chips inside it.
A fleeting pulse of light has been captured and then made to reappear in a different location by US physicists. The quantum sleight of hand exploits the properties of super-cooled matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. The emerging pulse was slightly weaker than the high-speed beam that entered the experimental setup, but was identical in all other respects.
The next milestone in the relentless pursuit of smaller, higher performance microchips has been unveiled. Chip-maker Intel has announced that it will start manufacturing processors using transistors just 45 nanometres (billionths of a metre) wide. Shrinking the basic building blocks of microchips will make them faster and more efficient.
Neural 'extension cord' developed for brain implants
(Jan 20, 2007)
A "data cable" made from stretched nerve cells could someday help connect computers to the human nervous system. The modified cells should form better connections with human tissue than the metal electrodes currently used for purposes such as remotely controlling prosthetics.
US firm Apple has confirmed its move into the telecoms industry, unveiling the long-awaited iPhone. Users will be able to download music and videos with the phone, demonstrated by Apple boss Steve Jobs at the annual Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Mr Jobs praised the phone's design and told the audience the "magical device" would "revolutionise the industry".
More people than ever are becoming early adopters of technology, says research outlined in Las Vegas. "Consumers get it; they understand technology and they are adopting it accordingly," analyst Sean Wargo told the Consumer Electronics Show. More than $155bn (£80bn) in consumer technologies is expected to be sold in the US in the next 12 months.
