IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522932
Edd Gent
{"title":"Careers: Susana Contrera: A Network Engineer who Keeps Meta's AI Infrastructure Humming","authors":"Edd Gent","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522932","url":null,"abstract":"Making breakthroughs in artificial intelligence these days requires huge amounts of computing power. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that by the end of this year, the company will have installed 350,000 Nvidia GPUs—the specialized computer chips used to train AI models—to power its AI research.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10522932","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140895001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522845
Harry Goldstein
{"title":"Making Connections: Travels with AI Made Possible by Bob Kahn's Historic Contributions","authors":"Harry Goldstein","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522845","url":null,"abstract":"“How did you find me?” specialty coffee roaster Dajo Aertssen asked. He'd just handed me a bag of single-origin cascara, the dried flesh of coffee cherries, in his shop, Cafés Muda in Lille, France.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10522845","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140895122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522931
Michael Koziol
{"title":"5 Questions for David Frankel: One Man's Quixotic Quest to Stop Robocalls","authors":"Michael Koziol","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522931","url":null,"abstract":"At some point, our phone habits changed. It used to be that if the phone rang, you answered it. With the advent of caller ID, you'd pick up only if it was someone you recognized. And now, with spoofing and robocalls, it can seem like a gamble to pick up the phone, period. In 2023, robocall blocking service Youmail estimates there were more than 55 billion robocalls in the United States. How did robocalls proliferate so much that now they seem to be dominating phone networks? And can any of this be undone? IEEE Spectrum spoke with David Frankel of ZipDX, who's been fighting robocalls for over a decade, to find out.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10522931","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140895044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522928
Susumu Noda;Masahiro Yoshida;Takuya Inoue
{"title":"The Brightest Semiconductor Laser Ever: Photonic Crystals Enable Tiny Lasers to Melt Steel","authors":"Susumu Noda;Masahiro Yoshida;Takuya Inoue","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10522928","url":null,"abstract":"IN 2016, THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCED a plan for the emergence of a new kind of society. Human civilization, the proposal explained, had begun with hunter-gatherers, passed through the agrarian and industrial stages, and was fast approaching the end of the information age. As then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put it, “We are now witnessing the opening of the fifth chapter.” • This chapter, called Society 5.0, would see made-on-demand goods and robot caretakers, taxis, and tractors. Many of the innovations that will enable it, like artificial intelligence, might be obvious. But there is one key technology that is easy to overlook: lasers.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140895131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523018
Allison Marsh
{"title":"Past Forward: A Planetarium is Born","authors":"Allison Marsh","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523018","url":null,"abstract":"In 1912, Oskar von Miller, an electrical engineer and the founder of the Deutsches Museum, had an idea: Could you project an artificial starry sky onto a dome, as a way of demonstrating astronomical principles to the public? It was such a novel concept that when von Miller asked executives at the Carl Zeiss company to manufacture the projector, they initially turned him down. Lead engineer Walther Bauersfeld made it happen. Completed in 1923, the Zeiss Model I displayed 4,500 stars, the Milky Way, and five planets across a 10-meter dome built on the roof of the Zeiss headquarters in Jena. The planetarium was the first of its kind, defining the look and feel of these installations to this day.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10523018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140895055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523020
David Schneider
{"title":"Electronically Assisted Astronomy > Take Detailed Images of the Heavens on the Cheap","authors":"David Schneider","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523020","url":null,"abstract":"I hate the eye strain that often comes with peering through a telescope at the night sky—I'd rather let a camera capture the scene. But I'm too frugal to sink thousands of dollars into high-quality astrophotography gear. The Goldilocks solution for me is something that goes by the name of electronically assisted astronomy, or EAA.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140895080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523014
Benjamin Kroposki;Andy Hoke
{"title":"A Path to 100 Percent Renewable Energy: Grid-Forming Inverters will Give Us the Grid We Need Now","authors":"Benjamin Kroposki;Andy Hoke","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2024.10523014","url":null,"abstract":"This is a more urgent problem than it might sound. The westernmost Hawaiian island of significant size, Kauai is home to around 70,000 residents and 30,000 tourists at any given time. Renewable energy accounts for 70 percent of the energy produced in a typical year—a proportion that's among the highest in the world and that can be hard to sustain for such a small and isolated grid. During the day, the local system operator, the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, sometimes reaches levels of 90 percent from solar alone. But on 2 April, the 26-MW generator was running near its peak output, to compensate for the drop in solar output as the sun set. At the moment when it failed, that single generator had been supplying 60 percent of the load for the entire island, with the rest being met by a mix of smaller generators and several utility-scale solar-and-battery systems.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140895129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}