Intel's New Chip Line Could Give Cheap Smartphones a Big Boost

As reported by Wired: The arrival of new mobile processors rarely qualifies as big news. But Intel’s latest family of chips, announced at Mobile World Congress today, are both powerful and cheap, and are sure to drive the industry trend of high-capability, low-cost smartphones to even greater extremes.

The Atom X3, X5 and X7 processors will show up in a wide range of 2015’s smartphones and tablets. The processor family is arranged much like its desktop Core “i” line, with the X3 being the lowest end of the bunch. The X3 is Intel’s previously announced Project SoFIA (“Smart or Feature phone with Intel Architecture”). It’s a cheap, entry-level system-on-a-chip with either a 3G or 4G LTE modem, Bluetooth, and x86 architecture-based application processors.

This chip is notable because it could enable much more capable phone hardware at the $50 price point, which will be a huge boon to smartphone adoption in developing nations. More than 20 device manufacturers have signed on to incorporate this chip into their hardware designs.  The first devices incorporating the Atom X3 chip (in a dual-core 3G variety) will arrive this quarter, while quad-core 3G and LTE versions will arrive by the end of the first half of the year.

The X5 and X7 series, meanwhile, are Intel’s mainstream and high-end mobile chipsets, and the first 14 nanometer SoCs for tablets. They have double the graphics capabilities of Intel’s previous-generation chips, without compromising battery life, and support features like Intel’s RealSense 3-D experience (which we checked out on the Dell Venue 8 7000 tablet) as well as its TrueKey face-recognition-based password authentication. You’ll find these two chips on Android and Windows tablets from Acer, Lenovo, Dell, HP, Asus, and Toshiba debuting during the first half of 2015.

Intel’s last hardware announcement for Mobile World Congress is a new LTE Advanced modem, the XMM 7360. This is the chip that connects you to your carrier’s wireless network, and with this one, Intel is promising more stable connections and faster speeds. Appearing in devices beginning the second half of the year, it’ll offer 450 Mbps down as well as something called carrier aggregation, which basically makes data usage more efficient, so users can get higher peak data rates.

You may wonder, with Intel’s huge focus on wearables in 2014, where the smartwatches at? Intel hasn’t forgotten about your wrist—company reps tell me we should expect more news on that front very soon.

NASA Astronauts Finish Spacewalk Trilogy for Space Taxis

As reported by India.com: NASA astronauts successfully ended their third and last spacewalk on March 1 to reassemble parts of the International Space Station (ISS) and create parking slots for Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) which will provide commercial space taxis in the near future.

The Expedition 42 astronauts Terry Virts and Barry Wilmore ended their spacewalk with the repressurisation of the Quest airlock. They completed installing 400 feet of cable and several antennae associated with the Common Communications for Visiting Vehicles system known as C2V2. The five-hour, 38-minute spacewalk was the third for Virts and the fourth for Wilmore.

Virts has now spent 19 hours and two minutes outside during his three spacewalks. Wilmore now has spent 25 hours and 36 minutes in the void of space during his four excursions. NASA crews have now spent a total of 1,171 hours and 29 minutes conducting space station assembly and maintenance during 187 spacewalks.

Boeing Crew Transportation System (CST)-100 and the SpaceX Crew Dragon will use the system in the coming years for rendezvous with the orbital laboratory and deliver crews to the space station, the US space agency said in a statement.

The US space agency is all set to perform three spacewalks — the first one scheduled for Saturday — to reassemble parts of the International Space Station (ISS) to create parking slots for Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) — two commercial space taxis. NASA has awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to develop, test and fly capsules that can ferry astronauts to and from the station.

According to SpaceX, the upgraded Dragon V2 passenger spacecraft should be ready for an unmanned debut test flight to the station in late 2016 and a crewed test flight in early 2017. Boeing plans to dock an unmanned CST-100 test flight to the station in April 2017.

SpaceX Successfully Launched Two Satellites

As reported by Forbes: At 10:50pm on Sunday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. On board were satellites for two different customers, Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS).

The two companies jointly financed both the satellite construction and launch. The satellites themselves were made by Boeing. They’re unique in that rather than conventional rocket thrusters, they’re powered by electric propulsion. That reduced the weight of the satellites to the point where both could be launched at once. The downside, though, is that it will take the satellites months to reach geostationary orbit.

Eutelsat’s satellite will join its network of broadcast satellite, providing the company coverage to its customers from Alaska and Canada to South America. ABS’s satellite will be used to provide customers on several continents with TV signals, internet backhaul, and cellular service.

SpaceX has been experimenting with making the first stage of its rockets reusable, which the company has said could save millions in launch costs. To that end, it’s been attempting to land the first stage of its rockets after takeoff. No landing attempt was made today, however.

“Next landing attempt will be 3rd launch from now,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted. “Tonight’s flight and following one will not have enough propellant.”

Musk indicated in a separate tweet, however, that changes will be made to the next generation of Falcon 9 rockets to improve the prospects of reusability.

SpaceX’s next launch is scheduled for March 21, when a Falcon 9 will deliver a communications satellite into orbit for Thales Alenia Space and the government of Turkmenistan. 

Hyperloop: Crowd-Sourced Company Plans Test Track in California

As reported by Gizmodo: One of several startups endeavoring to build Elon Musk's Hyperloop vision thinks it can start building a test track to demonstrate and develop the idea next year. That's a lovely sounding idea, but let's file this plan under "insanely hypothetical."

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. is a crowdsourced team of hundreds of brains that are trying to iron out all of the details of how to make the Hyperloop a reality. And there area lot of details to attend to when you want to build a 400-mile supersonic transport tube connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles: Everything from capsule geometry, to financial statements, to route details. It's a very optimistic endeavor with plenty of smart people on board. Just look at that pretty GIF up there! I'm ready to ride tubes into The Future.

The idealistic plan is to get construction going ASAP. Wired reports:

The idea is to build a five-mile track in Quay Valley, a planned community (itself a grandiose idea) that will be built from scratch on 7,500 acres of land around Interstate 5, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Construction of the hyperloop will be paid for with $100 million Hyperloop Transportation Technologies expects to raise through a direct public offering in the third quarter of this year.

The site of the track, Quay Valley, is a just proposed 7500 acre planned community on private land. It's core document contains just about every utopian idea you can think of. "We'll use half the water that typically would be used," Quay Hays, the brains of the operation, told the Fresno Bee. "We don't use water, we reuse it. Every drop will be cleaned and reused."

As Wired points out Hyperloop Transportation Technologies avoids many of the pesky right-of-way problems inherent in plowing 400 miles of infrastructure through the world by building the track. Of course, the full-scale five-mile track won't demonstrate some of the most important details because it's not going to get the capsules going 800 miles per hour.

Last month, Elon Musk announced plans to build his own Hyperloop test track in Texas. The main difference between Musk and Hyperloop Transpiration Technologies being his billions of dollars and loads of experience building larger than life ideas.

I reached out to Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. using the email I found on this press release to ask if they see any possible reason their plan might not work out.

Developing the Hyperloop is an insanely ambitious and admirable project. Theoretically it's possible. This wouldn't be the first time that a very idealistic and ambitious plan proved everyone wrong. We wish the dreamers the best. [Wired]

Study of Atmospheric 'Froth' May Help GPS Communications

As reported by Physics.org: When you don't know how to get to an unfamiliar place, you probably rely on a smart phone or other device with a Global Positioning System (GPS) module for guidance. You may not realize that, especially at high latitudes on our planet, signals traveling between GPS satellites and your device can get distorted in Earth's upper atmosphere.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration with the University of New Brunswick in Canada, are studying irregularities in the ionosphere, a part of the atmosphere centered about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above the ground that defines the boundary between Earth and space. The ionosphere is a shell of charged particles (electrons and ions), called plasma, that is produced by solar radiation and energetic particle impact.

The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, compares turbulence in the auroral region to that at higher latitudes, and gains insights that could have implications for the mitigation of disturbances in the ionosphere. Auroras are spectacular multicolored lights in the sky that mainly occur when energetic particles driven from the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic bubble that surrounds Earth, crash into the ionosphere below it. The auroral zones are narrow oval-shaped bands over high latitudes outside the polar caps, which are regions around Earth's magnetic poles. This study focused on the atmosphere above the Northern Hemisphere.

"We want to explore the near-Earth plasma and find out how big plasma irregularities need to be to interfere with navigation signals broadcast by GPS," said Esayas Shume. Shume is a researcher at JPL and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of the study.

If you think of the ionosphere as a fluid, the irregularities comprise regions of lower density (bubbles) in the neighborhood of high-density ionization areas, creating the effect of clumps of more and less intense ionization. This "froth" can interfere with radio signals including those from GPS and aircraft, particularly at high latitudes.

The size of the irregularities in the plasma gives researchers clues about their cause, which help predict when and where they will occur. More turbulence means a bigger disturbance to radio signals.

"One of the key findings is that there are different kinds of irregularities in the auroral zone compared to the polar cap," said Anthony Mannucci, supervisor of the ionospheric and atmospheric remote sensing group at JPL. "We found that the effects on radio signals will be different in these two locations."

The researchers found that abnormalities above the Arctic polar cap are of a smaller scale - about 0.62 to 5 miles (1 to 8 kilometers) - than in the auroral region, where they are 0.62 to 25 miles (1 to 40 kilometers) in diameter.

Why the difference? As Shume explains, the polar cap is connected to solar wind particles and electric fields in interplanetary space. On the other hand, the region of auroras is connected to the energetic particles in Earth's magnetosphere, in which magnetic field lines close around Earth. These are crucial details that explain the different dynamics of the two regions.

To look at irregularities in the ionosphere, researchers used data from the Canadian Space Agency satellite Cascade Smallsat and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE), which launched in September 2013. The satellite covers the entire region of high latitudes, making it a useful tool for exploring the ionosphere.

The data come from one of the instruments on CASSIOPE that looks at GPS signals as they skim the ionosphere. The instrument was conceived by researchers at the University of New Brunswick.

"It's the first time this kind of imaging has been done from space," said Attila Komjathy, JPL principal investigator and co-author of the study. "No one has observed these dimensional scales of the ionosphere before."

The research has numerous applications. For instance, aircraft flying over the North Pole rely on solid communications with the ground; if they lose these signals, they may be required to change their flight paths, Mannucci said. Radio telescopes may also experience distortion from the ionosphere; understanding the effects could lead to more accurate measurements for astronomy.

"It causes a lot of economic impact when these irregularities flare up and get bigger," he said.

NASA's Deep Space Network, which tracks and communicates with spacecraft, is affected by the ionosphere. Komjathy and colleagues also work on mitigating and correcting for these distortions for the DSN. They can use GPS to measure the delay in signals caused by the ionosphere and then relay that information to spacecraft navigators who are using the DSN's tracking data.

"By understanding the magnitude of the interference, spacecraft navigators can subtract the distortion from the ionosphere to get more accurate spacecraft locations," Mannucci said.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration with the University of New Brunswick in Canada, are studying irregularities in the ionosphere, a part of the atmosphere centered about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above the ground that defines the boundary between Earth and space. The ionosphere is a shell of charged particles (electrons and ions), called plasma, that is produced by solar radiation and energetic particle impact.
The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, compares turbulence in the auroral region to that at higher latitudes, and gains insights that could have implications for the mitigation of disturbances in the ionosphere. Auroras are spectacular multicolored lights in the sky that mainly occur when energetic particles driven from the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic bubble that surrounds Earth, crash into the ionosphere below it. The auroral zones are narrow oval-shaped bands over high latitudes outside the polar caps, which are regions around Earth's magnetic poles. This study focused on the atmosphere above the Northern Hemisphere.
"We want to explore the near-Earth plasma and find out how big plasma irregularities need to be to interfere with navigation signals broadcast by GPS," said Esayas Shume. Shume is a researcher at JPL and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of the study.
If you think of the ionosphere as a fluid, the irregularities comprise regions of lower density (bubbles) in the neighborhood of high-density ionization areas, creating the effect of clumps of more and less intense ionization. This "froth" can interfere with radio signals including those from GPS and aircraft, particularly at high latitudes.
The size of the irregularities in the plasma gives researchers clues about their cause, which help predict when and where they will occur. More turbulence means a bigger disturbance to radio signals.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration with the University of New Brunswick in Canada, are studying irregularities in the ionosphere, a part of the atmosphere centered about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above the ground that defines the boundary between Earth and space. The ionosphere is a shell of charged particles (electrons and ions), called plasma, that is produced by solar radiation and energetic particle impact.
The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, compares turbulence in the auroral region to that at higher latitudes, and gains insights that could have implications for the mitigation of disturbances in the ionosphere. Auroras are spectacular multicolored lights in the sky that mainly occur when energetic particles driven from the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic bubble that surrounds Earth, crash into the ionosphere below it. The auroral zones are narrow oval-shaped bands over high latitudes outside the polar caps, which are regions around Earth's magnetic poles. This study focused on the atmosphere above the Northern Hemisphere.
"We want to explore the near-Earth plasma and find out how big plasma irregularities need to be to interfere with navigation signals broadcast by GPS," said Esayas Shume. Shume is a researcher at JPL and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of the study.
If you think of the ionosphere as a fluid, the irregularities comprise regions of lower density (bubbles) in the neighborhood of high-density ionization areas, creating the effect of clumps of more and less intense ionization. This "froth" can interfere with radio signals including those from GPS and aircraft, particularly at high latitudes.
The size of the irregularities in the plasma gives researchers clues about their cause, which help predict when and where they will occur. More turbulence means a bigger disturbance to radio signals.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration with the University of New Brunswick in Canada, are studying irregularities in the ionosphere, a part of the atmosphere centered about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above the ground that defines the boundary between Earth and space. The ionosphere is a shell of charged particles (electrons and ions), called plasma, that is produced by solar radiation and energetic particle impact.
The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, compares turbulence in the auroral region to that at higher latitudes, and gains insights that could have implications for the mitigation of disturbances in the ionosphere. Auroras are spectacular multicolored lights in the sky that mainly occur when energetic particles driven from the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic bubble that surrounds Earth, crash into the ionosphere below it. The auroral zones are narrow oval-shaped bands over high latitudes outside the polar caps, which are regions around Earth's magnetic poles. This study focused on the atmosphere above the Northern Hemisphere.
"We want to explore the near-Earth plasma and find out how big plasma irregularities need to be to interfere with navigation signals broadcast by GPS," said Esayas Shume. Shume is a researcher at JPL and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of the study.
If you think of the ionosphere as a fluid, the irregularities comprise regions of lower density (bubbles) in the neighborhood of high-density ionization areas, creating the effect of clumps of more and less intense ionization. This "froth" can interfere with radio signals including those from GPS and aircraft, particularly at high latitudes.
The size of the irregularities in the plasma gives researchers clues about their cause, which help predict when and where they will occur. More turbulence means a bigger disturbance to radio signals.

FCC Passes Net Neutrality Rules in Victory for Open-Internet Activists

As reported by Engadget: It's a good day for proponents of an open internet: The Federal Communications Commission just approved its long-awaited network neutrality plan, which reclassifies broadband internet as a Title II public utility and gives the agency more regulatory power in the process. And unlike the FCC's last stab at net neutrality in 2010, today's new rules also apply to mobile broadband. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler laid out the basic gist of the plan earlier this month -- it'll ban things like paid prioritization, a tactic some ISPs used to get additional fees from bandwidth-heavy companies like Netflix, as well as the slowdown of "lawful content." But now Wheeler's vision is more than just rhetoric; it's something the FCC can actively enforce.

"It [the Internet] is our printing press, it is our town square, it is our individual soap box and our shared platform for opportunity," said FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel during today's open commission meeting. "That is why open internet policies matter. That is why I support network neutrality."

Don't expect the net neutrality drama to end here, though. Verizon has already made vague threats about suing the agency if it went through the public utility route, and Wheeler expects other lawsuits as well. Verizon's last legal action against the FCC led an appeals court to strike down its earlier (but far weaker) open internet rules on jurisdictional grounds. That's what ultimately pushed the agency to reclassify broadband -- now that it's viewed as a utility like telephone service, the FCC is free to make stronger regulatory decisions. The agency is aiming to alleviate fears of overregulation through forbearance, a process that lets it legally ignore certain regulations that other public utilities have to deal. That includes things like limiting rates and unbundling, which lets companies take advantage of equipment and services from competitors.

If you've been following the net neutrality debate over the past few years, you wouldn't be blamed for getting discouraged. Verizon's legal victory over the FCC last year made it seem like the big companies -- who would benefit the most from lax internet regulations -- had pretty much won the war for the web. But, it turns out, that defeat actually helped spark an unprecedented amount of grassroots activism on the web from groups like Fight for the Future, which got more than four million consumers to write into the FCC in support of net neutrality. Companies like Twitter, Reddit and Netflix -- whose businesses rely on unobstructed access to web users -- also did their part to lobby for an open web. All of that led to President Obama announcing his support for Title II broadband reclassification last fall, which put the FCC in a pretty awkward spot.

In his Wired editorial, Wheeler pointed out that he was previously relying on "commercial reasonableness," a concept brought up in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, to keep the internet open. He ended up changing his mind, however, when he realized that line of thought could end up protecting companies more than consumers. But, far more likely, Wheeler changed his stance as the tide turned in favor of regulating broadband as a utility.

When it comes to the new mobile broadband rules, commissioner Mignon Clyburn framed it as something that will help ensure equality: "We know many low income Americans rely heavily on their mobile device, and some rely heavily on that mobile phone as their only access to the internet," she said. "They need, they deserve, a robust experience on par with their wired peers."

Television writer and producer Veena Sud, whose series The Killing was saved from cancellation by Netflix twice, laid out the artistic justification for net neutrality:

What the open internet means for creativity, innovation and diversity points is by no means limited to my own experience. Series like Orange is the New Black and Transparent are giving voice to worlds and people and experiences never before seen on the small screen.

Sud also mentioned an intriguing data point about web content: Around 40 percent of online comedies and dramas are backed by women, compared to just 20 percent on traditional television.

So what's next? You can expect plenty of of chest thumping from Republicans, libertarians, and large telecoms against the new rules. FCC commissioner Ajit Pai also railed against the agency's decision as intrusive government regulation. He was skeptical that the FCC will stick with its forbearance plan, and he warned that the open internet rules will also lead to slower broadband speeds and more taxes. Expect to hear those talking points repeatedly throughout the rest of the year.

"This proposal has been described by one opponent as 'A secret plan to regulate the internet.' Nonsense!," FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said right before the agency voted on the new rules.

"This is no more a plan to regulate the internet than the first amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept: Openness, expression, and an absence of gatekeepers telling people what they can do, where they can go, and what they can think."

5G Wireless System Clocks 1 Terabit of Data per Second

As reported by Quartz: Researchers have achieved the fastest mobile wireless speed to date, managing to reach 1 terabit per second over a 5G connection—about 65,000 times faster than the average 4G download speed.

“This is the same capacity as fiber optics but we are doing it wirelessly,” Rahim Tafazolli, director of the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Center, told V3. Samsung set the previous 5G speed record, 7.5 gigabits per second, in October.

Theoretically, this major speed boost—announced at V3’s mobile conference—means the mobile web will be able to support richer multimedia experiences. Higher speeds will undoubtedly accelerate the mobile video market, and the increased bandwidth will be able to facilitate the streaming of larger files, such as video shot in 4K resolution. Without tangible limitations to speed, developers can also build more powerful cloud-based apps. (Earlier this month, Apple raised the cap on the size of apps from 2GB to 4GB.)

It’s important to note that the fastest 5G speeds to date have been achieved in a vacuum. Latency, a slowdown introduced by infrastructure, will remain a problem, possibly for decades, Tafazolli told V3. Furthermore, mobile operators have yet to agree on a single vision of 5G.

Some want it to be a blend of existing technologies (2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi) while others are pushing for a clear demarcation, with specific data rate and latency targets.

The recent benchmark signals potential for a more connected world, with faster flow of information, but the real-world availability of 5G is still years away. When it does arrive, it likely won’t be anything close to the 1Tbps achieved. Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, said in January that 5G could come to market by 2020 in Britain, with projections for speeds as high as 50Gbps. 

The US is poised to migrate to 5G in 2025, according to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service.

UK Spectrum Policy Forum - Barry Lewis, Samsung - 5G Mobile Communications for 2020 and Beyond Vision and Key Enabling Technologies from techUK