IEEE

IEEE ratifies 802.11n amendment (at last)

21:29 September 15, 2009 PDT

The ratification of the 802.11n amendment to the WLAN base standard might just bring this ...

Seven years after starting to talk about it, and six years after introducing the first draft, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) has finally ratified the 802.11n wireless local area network (WLAN) amendment to the base standard. This effectively means that the super-fast routers we've been using in our home networks and for internet access for the past couple of years are now amongst those officially recognized by the IEEE. Read More

ROBOTICS

Learning robot puts on a happy face

By Darren Quick

00:18 July 14, 2009 PDT

The Einstein robot head performs some random facial movements as part of the learning proc...

Robots generally aren’t the most expressive of entities, but their faces are becoming increasingly realistic as the number of artificial muscles controlling them rises. Today, a highly trained person must manually set up these kinds of realistic robots so that the servos pull in the right combination to make specific facial expressions, but researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are looking to automate the process by giving robots the ability to learn realistic facial expressions. Read More

ELECTRONICS

10x better? Juniper Networks launches industry’s first 100Gbs Ethernet card

By Alan Brandon

21:19 June 24, 2009 PDT

Juniper's 100 GbE interface card works in its T1600 core router

Juniper Networks has announced what it says is the industry's first 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GbE) router interface card, which will be offered as part of Juniper's T1600 core router. The 100 GbE card is designed to address what the company calls the “new generation of scale” coming to core networks. Telecommunications providers, cloud-infrastructure companies, and other organizations rolling out large-scale virtualization face ever increasing demands on their networks. The 100 GE interface will provide an order of magnitude increase over most current interfaces. Read More

PERSONAL COMPUTING

IEEE approves next generation FireWire specification

By Tim Hanlon

20:20 July 31, 2008 PDT

August 1, 2008 Since its introduction in 1995, IEEE 1394 (better known as FireWire, Apple's name for the interface) has become the go-to interface for high-bandwidth applications like professional audio and video production. The IEEE has approved the IEEE 1394-2008 specification, adding support for bandwidth up to 3.2Gbps. Read More