Joseph Heremans and Roberto Meyrs at the Ohio State University have been studying materials that could be used to turn heat from ICs into electricity. The research is focused on thermo-electricity and spintronics. In theory, this could mean mutual benefits to heavy processing: more effective heat removal from processors while generating the electricity they need to operate.
Random numbers are a relative concept. In general, random numbers used in digital electronics are called Psuedo-Random sequences. There is a defined algorithm that is used to generate the sequence and does not actually occur in nature. In applications like Flashing a LED, this method is fine. However, for any level of encryption this is unacceptable.
Steve Buch at Electronics Weekly writes about how researchers Dr. Marie O’Neill and Dr. Jiang Wu at the University’s Institute of Electronics and Communications Information Technology (ECIT) has developed methods to generate true random bits digitally.
Fundamental to all of the ECIT generators is the effect of random noise during the transition from a metastable state to a bistable state.
Whether the output becomes a 0 or 1 depends on conditions, including internal noise, at the instant of input transition.
If you are giving thoughts to creating a cryptographic device, you might want to give their methods a look.
Electronic communications systems are made up of three basic components: a transmitter, a receiver, and a transmission medium. Use a video game system with a wired controller as an example. The controller is a transmitter, while the console is a receiver, and the wire that connects the two is the transmission medium. This wire is typically made up of copper. The distance from a couch to your tv is relatively short compared to the distance two continents separated by an ocean. For this distance fiber optic cables are used. Instead of electrical signals being transmitted, lasers are used to generate light across fibers of glass.
Until recently, to transmit 1s and 0s the laser would turn the light would be pulsed on from an off state. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado have reversed the process and have successfully generated a series of “dark pulses.”
Any transmission medium will have irregularities which disrupt communications. What the researchers have found is that by sending Dark Pulses they can minimize the irregularities typically found in Fiber.
According to the lead researcher, Richard Mirin of NIST, it will be a few years before this technology makes it into the commercial marketplace.
More information can be found in this article at PhysicsWorld.
