Tag: mass-production

Samsung’s 512GB chip will give your phone PC-like storage

Samsung has begun mass production of the world’s first 512GB embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS), meaning its flagship phones can now hold double what they could last year, when the company released its 256GB version. Phones with the new chips can store up to 130 10-minute UHD videos. Read and write performance has been given a boost, too. Sequential read and write speeds reach 860MB per second and 255MB per second respectively — not a huge increase on the 256GB chip but enough transfer a 5GB HD video clip to a solid state hard drive in around six seconds, or more than eight times faster than a standard microSD card. It also has a random read speed of 42, 000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and a write speed of 40, 000 IOPS. Samsung pitched previous versions of this technology to the automotive market as cars will soon need to record high volumes of sensor data, but says at this time that next-gen smartphones and tablets are the best candidates for the chip, and plans to “steadily increase an aggressive production volume” to meet increasing demand for advanced mobile storage. Via: Business Wire

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Samsung’s 512GB chip will give your phone PC-like storage

Mass-produced artificial blood is now a real possibility

Doctors dream of having artificial blood always on hand, but the reality has usually been very different. While you can produce red blood cells in a lab, the current technique (which prods stem cells into action) only nets a small number of them at best. British researchers appear to have found the solution, however: they’ve developed a technique that can reliably produce an unlimited number of red blood cells. The trick is to create “immortalized” premature red blood cells that you can culture as much as you like, making mass production a real possibility. The biggest challenge is translating the technique to commercial manufacturing. Scientists have produced a few liters of blood in the lab, but there’s a big difference between that and the massive volumes needed to serve even a single hospital. Although the UK’s National Health Service is planning to trial artificial blood this year , this new technique won’t be involved. As it is, you wouldn’t likely see a wholesale switch to artificial blood even if this new method was ready for the real world. Any mass production is most likely to focus on people with rare blood types that can’t always count on donations. Even that limited effort could make a huge difference, mind you. Hospitals could always have a consistent supply of rare blood, so you wouldn’t have to worry about them running out in a life-or-death situation. Via: BBC , Digital Journal Source: University of Bristol , Nature

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Mass-produced artificial blood is now a real possibility

Trippy Non-Mechanical Ferrofluid Clock Features Self-Assembling, Organic Numbers

You simply have to see this. Imagine an Etch-a-Sketch had sex with a lava lamp, and the resultant offspring was raised by adoptive digital clock parents. The result could only be the Ferrolic Display , a wonderfully bizarre time-telling device created by designer Zelf Koelman. Ferrolic from zelfkoelman on Vimeo. Eindhoven-based Koelman has harnessed ferrofluid, a/k/a ferromagnetic fluid, with electromagnets within the device to dynamically form the numbers. The Ferrolic is of course run on software, which means the device needn’t be a clock, but could presumably be hacked to deliver your text messages and the like. However, in its current iteration the product wouldn’t last long. Still in the prototype stages, “the lifetime of the fluids used in the glass container module mainly depends on the frequency of use. In practice this lifetime is expected to be a few months of full usage, ” Koelman writes. However, he also adds that “Ongoing development allows for a much longer lifetime in the near future.” Without the means of mass production, Koelman is selling 24 prototype-stage Ferrolics for €7, 500 (pre-tax), or about USD $8, 576. Users can connect to the device via Wi-Fi and control it via web browser. As for the short lifespan, the language on the Inquiries page of Ferrolic’s website isn’t quite clear, but it appears one may be able to order updated glass modules in the future.

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Trippy Non-Mechanical Ferrofluid Clock Features Self-Assembling, Organic Numbers