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<br /><ul><li><keyword id="8010226" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="cerebras-systems">Cerebras Systems</keyword> has launched a new transistor chip with 1.2 trillion transistors, 400,000 processing cores, and 18GB of on chip memory.</li><li>The California-based start up fit all of that on a single wafer measuring 46,225 square millimeters.</li><li>The main purpose of the chip is to remove the bottleneck of limited data processing in the training of <keyword id="107950" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="20" keywordseo="artificial-intelligence">artificial intelligence</keyword> (AI) algorithms.</li></ul><keyword id="8010227" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="transistor-chips">Transistor chips</keyword> are key to any computerised process, be it playing a game on your laptop or running <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/accenture-number-one-on-idc-ai-rankings/articleshow/69986095.cms">artificial intelligence</a> (AI) algorithms. <br /><br />The biggest, baddest and largest of them all has finally made it into the market after three years. It took 173 engineers and $112 million venture capital funding from Benchmark, Foundation Capital, Eclipse and other companies, to make it. <br /><br />Cerebras Systems’ ‘<a href="https://www.cerebras.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Cerebras-Wafer-Scale-Engine-Whitepaper.pdf">Wafer Scale Engine</a>’ as it is called has more cores, more memory and more power than any chip till date. The California-based startup is trying to pace the evolution of chips to the increasing needs of the tech industry. <br /><br /><div type="image" title="Angled_Chip_1400_edited" msid="70780720" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;Wafer Scale Engine&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>

<br />The <keyword id="8010225" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="wafer-scale-engine">Wafer Scale Engine</keyword> has the potential to solve one of the primary bottlenecks in the tech industry. Tech giants like <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/yougov-report-says-google-is-the-top-brand-in-india-followed-by-whatsapp-and-youtube/articleshow/70752208.cms">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/facebook-india-partners-with-vc-funds-to-help-businesses/articleshow/70055762.cms">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/chinese-giant-tencent-is-in-talks-to-buy-a-3-4-billion-stake-in-ariana-grandes-music-label-universal-music-group/articleshow/70552858.cms">Tencent</a> have expressed that the biggest limitation with AI in today’s age is the fact that it takes too long to train AI models. A larger chip could change just that. <br /><br /><strong>Over a trillion transistors <br /></strong><br />The Wafer Scale Engine has 1.2 trillion transistors — the highest number of transistors on any transistor chip so far. <br /><br />To put that in perspective, any laptop with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/miscellaneous/heres-what-all-those-numbers-and-letters-in-an-intel-chip-mean-when-youre-buying-a-new-computer/slidelist/65626149.cms">Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 processors</a> have about 1.5 million transistors. <br /><br />Even Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) 7 nanometer <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/amds-latest-chip-reveal-is-one-of-the-biggest-turning-points-in-the-history-of-silicon-valley-one-analyst-says/articleshow/70593102.cms">Epyc “Rome” CPU </a>with 32 billion transistors, which was announced earlier this month, doesn’t even come close to matching this.<br /><br />In addition to the massive amount of transistors, the Wafer Scale Engine has 400,000 processing cores. <br /><strong><br />Total recall <br /></strong><br />The Wafer Scale Engine also has more memory than other chip in the market with 18GB — and it’s one of the key components of a computer’s architecture. <br /><br />More memory on-chip means faster calculation, lower latency, and better power efficiency as data moves from one place to the other. <br /><br />More impressively, all of this is on a single wafer that functions as one single chip instead of dividing a single wafers into individual chips — what is normal every chip until now.<br /><br />The reason it hasn’t been done till now is because there are multiple issues in trying to make it happen. <br /><br />One, the software to handle these chips has to be written from scratch. <br /><br />And two, since all of it is one wafer, there had to be a fail safe in place in case even a single core went down — rendering the entire flow inoperative.<br /><br />Cerebras overcame the laws of physics by simply building in redundancies that could backup in the event that one of the core’s stopped working. It’s not a cheap fix but it works, according to the company.<br /><br /><strong>Size does matter<br /></strong><br />The Wafer Scale Engine has been specifically designed to process AI applications. And, when it comes to AI, chip size is important. <br /><br />Bigger chips can handle more information and produce answers in a shorter time space. The ‘training time’ that machine learning algorithms is reduced substantially.<br /><br />Researchers, in turn, can test a lot more ideas and feed in bigger chucks on data to solve their problems.<br /><br />The Wafer Scale Engine, in this regard, measures 46,225 square millimeters.<br /><br />
<div type="image" title="chip-comparison_edited" msid="70780760" hostid="261"></div>

<br />Nvidia — known as a market leader when it comes to graphic processing units (GPUs) — only offers 815 square millimeters and 21.1 billion transistors on its largest processor. That means the Wafer Scale Engine is 56.7 times larger, 3,000 times faster and has 10,000 times more memory bandwidth. <br /><br /><strong>See also:<br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/amds-latest-chip-reveal-is-one-of-the-biggest-turning-points-in-the-history-of-silicon-valley-one-analyst-says/articleshow/70593102.cms">AMD's latest chip reveal is 'one of the biggest turning points in the history of Silicon Valley,' one analyst says</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/qualcomms-new-chipset-will-change-the-way-you-drive/articleshow/28955186.cms">Qualcomm’s New Chipset Will Change The Way You Drive</a><br /><br />

The biggest, baddest and largest of all transistor chips found a loophole to overcome the laws of physics

I tried 27 of Trader Joe's seasonal summer products, and there are only 6 I wouldn't buy again

<ul><li>Paul <keyword id="238043" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="ravindranath" source="Orion">Ravindranath</keyword>, the head of <keyword id="9998664" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="google-accelerator" source="Orion">Google Accelerator</keyword> in India, says that the challenges that women entrepreneurs face go beyond funding. <br /></li><li>The <keyword id="6355629" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="google" source="Orion">Google</keyword> Accelerator programme intends to help entrepreneurs with hiring in addition to aiding with team structure, team position and culture. <br /></li><li>The ideas for startups by women entrepreneurs across tier 1, 2 and 3 cities include healthcare startups, PCOS, farm productivity, agritechs that are digital first, says Ravindranath.</li></ul><br />In spite of success stories of women-led startups like Nykaa, The Good Glamm group, MobiKwik and more, India still has few women entrepreneurs – as they face unique challenges, which their male counterparts are not subjected to.<br /><br />The proof of this lies in the funding numbers. According to <a href="https://yourstory.com/herstory/2022/03/herstorys-funding-report-the-state-of-womens-entrepreneurs-india-startup">a YourStory report</a>, $66.76 billion was raised by startups in the 2018-22 period. Of this, only 6% flowed to startups with female co-founders; and for solo founders, the slice is wafer thin at 0.78%. <br /><br /><strong>A community of women founders</strong> <br /><br />According to Paul Ravindranath, the head of Google Accelerator in India who has been supporting startups for seven years now, the challenges that women face go beyond funding. <br /><br />“We did a survey amongst the applicants for our accelerators and 48% of women founders said they need a strong mentor to guide them. They are looking for a community that supports funders and a hero story that they can follow,” he told Business Insider India in an interview.<br /><br />Ravindranath says that the number of women applicants to the programme when it started in 2015-16 was 10% of the lot and now it’s at 30-35%. This year, they’re launching a dedicated programme for women.<br /><br />Google for Startups Accelerator - India Women Founders is a three-month mentorship programme that will support stage-agnostic founders and offer support across technology, user experience, marketing and leadership.<br /><br />“The idea is to reduce friction and solve problems that are unique to women founders,” he says. For this year, the programme has already received over 300 applications of which they will select 20 who will go through the programme. After its completion, a demo day which is akin to a graduation ceremony where they can meet investors among others. .<br /><br />A lot of the ideas that come from women entrepreneurs across tier 1, 2 and 3 cities include healthcare startups, Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and farm productivity. “There are also a lot of ideas around agritech space that are digital first,” said Ravindranath.<br /><br />Most of these founders are either from corporate or engineering backgrounds, between the age group of mid-20s to late 30s, and wanting to solve a problem in a big way. <br /><br /><strong>Women founders ecosystem</strong> <br /><br />The founder of VC firm Kalaari Capital, <keyword id="1397790" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="vani-kola" source="Orion">Vani Kola</keyword> started a programme called CXXO, for which she had earmarked $10 million per annum to invest in startups with female founders. This is in addition to providing them with coaching by f<a href="https://www.womenentrepreneurindia.com/news/venture-capitalist-vani-kola-launches-cxxo-programme-to-invest-in-female-led-startups-nwid-783.html#:~:text=Vani%20Kola%20is%20a%20venture,women%20in%20the%20Indian%20business.">emale trailblazers like Zilingo co-founder</a> Ankiti Bose; and <keyword id="10387" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="microsoft" source="Orion">Microsoft</keyword> country head of VC and PE Partnerships Lathika Pai and more. <br /><br />In May this year, the Israel em<a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/6-week-mentorship-programme-for-women-entrepreneurs-on-30th-anniversary-of-india-israel-diplomatic-ties/articleshow/91276879.cms">bassy collaborated with IIT Delhi</a> and Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment (WEE) Foundation to provide a six-week mentorship programme for women founders.<br /><br />Apart from upskilling and helping them scale up their ideas, the common point for all the programmes is building a network of peers. One of the founders that Google had mentored is Naiyya Saggi, who founded BabyChakra that was later acquired by The Good Glamm Group. <br /><br />Now, Saggi is a unicorn co-founder and a regular contributor to many such forums and Ravidranath says that she has come full circle – she took her idea to turn it into a unicorn and is now guiding others to achieve the same.<br /><br />“It’s an under-represented group and more should show the way,” he says. <br /><br /><strong>The right inputs</strong><br /><br />In addition to community support, most women founders lack the right input at the right time. The trouble with women founders starts right at the beginning. “When we asked the female alumni what kept them from applying a year earlier because they were ready, they said they were not ready. This is not true with male founders who start even when they have unfinished projects and hope for the best,” said Ravindranath.<br /><br />Women founders tend to make sure they can invest themselves fully and are highly conscious of the resources available to them, before they sign on to entrepreneurship. Women also find it tough to hire co-founders or team members or a tech team and tend to outsource the tech part to an agency. <br /><br />In fact a lot of ideas fail at the tech stage, and the programme intends to build a good foundation before they take it to the funding stage.<br /><br />Google Accelerator programme intends to help women entrepreneurs with hiring in addition to aiding with team structure, team position and culture. It also intends to help them pitch better, provide them with pitching strategies and convert their ideas into investable businesses. <br /><br />Ravindranath calls it “a slow-burn process which has to be done” considering only 15% of all entrepreneurs are women. <br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO :<br /><br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/india-drops-7-spots-in-fixed-broadband-speeds-in-aug-globally/articleshow/94321571.cms">India drops 7 spots in fixed broadband speeds in Aug globally</a><br /><br /></strong><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/thelife/personalities/news/rana-kapoor-the-rise-and-fall-of-yes-banks-former-co-founder-and-ceo/slidelist/94321278.cms"><strong>CBI files chargesheet against Rana Kapoor — The rise and fall of Yes Bank’s former co-founder and CEO</strong></a><br /><br />

Google Accelerator hopes to solve the unique problems of women entrepreneurs

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<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3">Breakthrough Starshot</a></span></p><p class="caption">An edited photo of a prototype "sprite," a type of spacecraft that was launched into orbit by Breakthrough Starshot.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Breakthrough Starshot, an ambitious project to explore a nearby star system, has launched its first prototypes into orbit.</strong></li><li><strong>Each "sprite" spacecraft is about the size of a cracker and is equipped with a radio, computer, and other instruments.</strong></li><li><strong>The feat is a step towards developing even smaller and more capable "starchip" robots.</strong></li><li><strong>Starchips may be propelled by lasers to the nearby Alpha Centauri star system within two to three decades.</strong></li></ul><p>Breakthrough Starshot, a Russian billionaire's $100-million effort to explore the closest star system to our own, has launched the smallest-ever spacecraft into orbit around Earth.</p><p>The six cracker-size robots, called "sprites," are printed circuit boards designed to survive in space. Each one comes equipped with tiny solar panels and two antennas, plus a tiny radio, computer, gyroscope (to move and stabilize the craft), and magnetometer (to orient to Earth's magnetic field).</p><p>Each sprite is wafer-thin, measures about 12 square centimeters (1.9 square inches) in area, and weighs the same amount as four US dollar bills.</p><p>As reported by Scientific American, Starshot launched six of the sprites on June 23 aboard two European satellites on an Indian-built rocket.</p><p>"This is a very early version of what we would send to interstellar distances," Pete Worden, a former director of NASA's Ames Research Center and Starshot's executive director, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reaching-for-the-stars-breakthrough-sends-smallest-ever-satellites-into-orbit/">told SciAm</a>.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c38-cartosat-2-series-satellite/pslv-c38-cartosat-2-series-satellite-gallery">Copyright of ISRO</a></span></p><p class="caption">India's PSLV-C38 mission launches toward space.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Two of Starshot's sprites are attached to small educational nanosatellites: the Venta (operated by Latvia) and the Max Valier (operated by Italy). Four more await deployment inside the Max Valier, according to SciAm.</p><p>"The spacecraft are in radio communication with ground stations in California and New York, as well as with amateur radio enthusiasts around the world," a Starshot press release said. "This mission is designed to test how well the Sprites' electronics perform in orbit, and demonstrates their novel radio communication architecture."</p><p>The fact that they seem to work in space is a big advance for Breakthrough Starshot - an ambitious, decades-long project <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-alpha-centauri-robots-stephen-hawking-yuri-milner-2016-4">announced in April 2016</a> by Stephen Hawking and Russian physicist and venture capitalist Yuri Milner.</p><p>The ultimate goal, perhaps within the next 20 to 30 years, is to propel even smaller spaceships, called "starchips," to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-starshot-laser-robots-work-2016-4/">20% the speed of light</a> with powerful, Earth-based lasers.</p><p>"Life in the universe does not only mean extraterrestrial life ... it means us," Milner said at the time. "Can we reach the stars? Can we do it in our lifetimes?"</p><h2>Sailing between stars</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Breakthrough Prize</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Breakthrough Starshot's general target is Alpha Centauri, the closest system of stars to Earth, which is located about 4.37 light-years (25.7 trillion miles) away.</p><p>Within that system, researchers are eyeing Proxima Centauri: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">a red dwarf star</a> that's about 1 trillion miles closer than two other stars in the system.</p><p>Proxima Centauri is thought to harbor an Earth-size planet, called <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-potentially-earth-like-planet-around-closest-star-2016-8">Proxima b</a>, in its Goldilocks-like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">habitable zone</a>.</p><p>"A spacecraft equipped with a camera and various filters could take color images of the planet and infer whether it is green (harboring life as we know it), blue (with water oceans on its surface) or just brown (dry rock)," Avi Loeb, a physicist at Harvard University and a <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/fe201609">Starshot mission advisory committee chair</a>, told Business Insider in 2016.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1241e/">ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin</a></span></p><p class="caption">A wide-field view of the sky around the bright star Alpha Centauri.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The photos of Proxima b would take at least 4.24 years - the distance in light-years from here to the star - to get back to Earth.</p><p>Milner said in April 2016 that Starshot will start out as a $100 million engineering proof-of-concept to design, build, launch, and propel a small fleet of starchips to Alpha Centauri in about 25 years' time.</p><p>Each starchip will contain a laser-light sail for propulsion. "This is the Silicon valley approach to spaceflight," Milner said at the time.</p><p>The starchips will be built out of a "gram-scale" silicon wafer that's "carrying cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment, and constituting a fully functional space probe," Milner added.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Breakthrough Prize</span></p><p class="caption">An artist's depiction of Starshot's "beamer" laser array that'd propel StarChips to a nearby star system</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Moving each starchip along will be a "Lightsail" propulsion unit. An <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMkWGN1G6Kg">array of powerful lasers called a "beamer"</a> will take aim at the Lightsails, accelerating each tiny spacecraft to more than 134 million mph.</p><p>Loeb previously said that the next five to 10 years of the project - and most of the $100 million - will be focused on <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-nanocraft-technology-challenges-2016-4">proving that the laser propulsion idea actually works</a>. They'll need it to function as way to "potentially launch hundreds of cheap, gram-scale spacecrafts per year."</p><p>Starshot wants to launch hundreds of starchips because there's safety in numbers: At 20% the speed of light, hitting even the tiniest speck of space dust could obliterate a robot.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>ESO/M. Kornmesser</span></p><p class="caption">An artist's impression of the surface of the extrasolar planet Proxima b.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"This will allow us to send a fleet of probes towards Proxima that could relay the images taken back to Earth more easily (from one spacecraft to the next along the line of sight to Proxima)," he said.</p><p>Even if the mission is a smashing success, Starshot may discover that Proxima b doesn't support life. Loeb said it's important to explore the not-so-distant world regardless.</p><p>"The lifetime of Proxima is several trillion years, almost a thousand times longer than the remaining lifetime of the Sun," he said. "Hence, a habitable rocky planet around Proxima would be the most natural location to where our civilization could aspire to move after the Sun will die, five billions years from now." (At least one sci-fi author <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/earth-like-planet-proxima-b-colonize-kim-stanley-robinson-aurora-2016-8">thinks this is a horrible idea</a>.)</p><h2>A wealthy fan of space exploration</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hawking-Space-Exploration/406382af8d874f428ad8660e47984665/3/0">Associated Press</a></span></p><p class="caption">Russian billionaire Yuri Milner holds up a Starshot "Sprite" during an April 12, 2016, press conference in New York.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Milner's fascination with space and <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> runs deep.</p><p>The first man in space was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin - who Milner <a href="http://time.com/3964238/yuri-milner-breakthrough-listen/">has said</a> he was named after.</p><p>Milner has also spent big money on science initiatives before, <a href="http://time.com/3964238/yuri-milner-breakthrough-listen/">saying he wants to celebrate</a> "intellectual achievement" in the same way we celebrate artistic and athletic prowess.</p><p>The Russian billionaire philanthropist has collaborated with Hawking in the past - in July 2015, the two announced a $100 million plan, called "<a href="http://www.techinsider.io/milners-100-million-search-for-aliens-2015-7">Breakthrough Listen</a>," to search the stars for intelligent extraterrestrial life.</p><p>Milner was working on a PhD in physics before he became a Silicon Valley investor. He earned his fortune investing in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and Groupon.</p><p>Today he funds some of the biggest science prizes out there, including the Breakthrough Prize, which Mark Zuckerberg also supports.</p><p><em>Kevin Loria and Lauren Friedman contributed to this post.</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-launching-tiny-robots-nearest-star-alpha-centauri-2016-4">How these laser-propelled robots could bring us to a star 25 trillion miles away</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="JwcmtzMjE62UOoiv4Vw4S-kom9OujD1H" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

A Russian billionaire has launched the smallest-ever spacecraft into orbit - a key step to reaching a nearby star system

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Intel / YouTube" title_caption="Gordon Moore" class="zoomin" href="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/52516c9a69beddb96720938e-960/gordon-moore-1.png"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T6jeJOumIk">Intel / YouTube</a></p><p class="caption">Gordon Moore</p></div><p></p></div>In 1965, Gordon Moore (one of the founders of Intel) stated that he believed the number of transistors that could be put on the same sized wafer for a minimum cost per transistor would double every year. </p>
<p>In 1975, he changed his estimate to a doubling every two years. For a very long time, that estimate has been incredibly accurate. Because of how semiconductors work, the smaller transistors produced over time inherently used less power while running faster.</p>
<p>Until the early 2000s, that is. That's when transistors started to become so small and densely packed together that it became difficult for engineers to pack more in and still dissipate enough heat to keep them from burning out.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.itrs.net/Links/2012ITRS/2012Chapters/2012Overview.pdf" target="_blank">International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors</a>, that's when companies had to start resorting to "Equivalent Scaling," which is another way of saying "finding other ways to keep performance moving forward when a chipset isn't moving to a smaller architecture."</p>

How Apple, Intel And Motorola Are Pushing 'Moore's Law' To Its Limits

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Intel / YouTube" title_caption="Gordon Moore" class="zoomin" href="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/52516c9a69beddb96720938e-960/gordon-moore-1.png"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T6jeJOumIk">Intel / YouTube</a></p><p class="caption">Gordon Moore</p></div><p></p></div>In 1965, Gordon Moore (one of the founders of Intel) stated that he believed the number of transistors that could be put on the same sized wafer for a minimum cost per transistor would double every year. </p>
<p><a href="##slideshow##"><strong>Go straight to the companies who are challenging the limits of Moore's Law &gt;</strong></a></p>
<p>In 1975, he changed his estimate to a doubling every two years. For a very long time, that estimate has been incredibly accurate. Because of how semiconductors work, the smaller transistors produced over time inherently used less power while running faster.</p>
<p>Until the early 2000s, that is. That's when transistors started to become so small and densely packed together that it became difficult for engineers to pack more in and still dissipate enough heat to keep them from burning out.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.itrs.net/Links/2012ITRS/2012Chapters/2012Overview.pdf" target="_blank">International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors</a>, that's when companies had to start resorting to "Equivalent Scaling," which is another way of saying "finding other ways to keep performance moving forward when a chipset isn't moving to a smaller architecture."</p>

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Back in April, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner pledged $100 million toward a crazy plan to visit another star system.<p>The mission - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-alpha-centauri-robots-stephen-hawking-yuri-milner-2016-4">Breakthrough Starshot</a> - aims to get this done by propelling teeny, tiny spaceships to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-starshot-laser-robots-work-2016-4/">20% the speed of light</a> with powerful lasers.</p><p>Milner and famed physicist Stephen Hawking initially said their destination would be Alpha Centauri: the nearest star system to Earth, located some 4.37 light-years (25.7 trillion miles) away.</p><p>But as far as anyone knows, Alpha Centauri is bereft of habitable worlds.</p><p>This is precisely why the recent and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-potentially-earth-like-planet-around-closest-star-2016-8">groundbreaking discovery of a nearby planet</a> could switch things up for Starshot.</p><p>Astronomers on Wednesday announced they'd discovered an Earth-like and potentially habitable world, called Proxima b, circling Proxima Centauri - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">a red dwarf star</a> that's closer than Alpha Centauri by about 1 trillion miles.</p><p>"The discovery ... provides an obvious target for a flyby mission," Avi Loeb, a physicist at Harvard University and a <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/fe201609">Starshot mission advisory committee chair</a>, wrote in an email to Business Insider.</p><p>"A spacecraft equipped with a camera and various filters could take color images of the planet and infer whether it is green (harboring life as we know it), blue (with water oceans on its surface) or just brown (dry rock)," Loeb wrote.</p><p>The team hopes to "achieve a launch in 2-3 decades," says Loeb, and reach Proxima Centauri about 20 years later.</p><p>The photos, meanwhile, would take at least 4.24 years - the distance in light-years from here to the star - to get back to Earth.</p><p>Adding up that timeline, Starshot thinks it could take photos of Proxima b (plus whatever else its nanocraft encounter there) by the year 2060.</p><h2>How to sail to a star</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Milner said in April that Starshot will start out as a $100 million engineering proof-of-concept to design, build, launch, and propel a small fleet of iPhone-size "nanocraft" to Alpha Centauri in about 25 years' time.</p><p>Each nanocraft will contain a tiny spacecraft and a laser-light sail for propulsion. "This is the Silicon valley approach to spaceflight," Milner said.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The hypothetical spacecraft, called StarChip, will be built out of a "gram-scale" silicon wafer that's "carrying cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment, and constituting a fully functional space probe."<p>Moving each StarChip along will be a Lightsail propulsion unit.</p><p>An <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMkWGN1G6Kg">array of powerful lasers called a "beamer"</a> will take aim at the Lightsails, accelerating each nanocraft to more than 134 million mph.</p><h2>'A sense of urgency' to reach Proxima b</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>At this point Starshot already has a prototype for the StarChip (pictured in Milner's hand at the top of this post).</p><p>It's smaller than an iPhone, and it will be backed with cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation, and communication equipment.</p><p>But Loeb said the next 5 to 10 years of the project - and most of the $100 million - will be focused on <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-nanocraft-technology-challenges-2016-4">proving the laser propulsion idea actually works</a>.</p><p>From there they'll work on perfecting the tiny ships, Loeb said, noting that a beamer "could potentially launch hundreds of cheap, gram-scale spacecrafts per year."</p><p>"This will allow us to send a fleet of probes towards Proxima that could relay the images taken back to Earth more easily (from one spacecraft to the next along the line of sight to Proxima)," he said.</p><p>Noting that exisiting telescopes can't photograph the new planet, Loeb added: "The curiosity to know more about the planet (most importantly whether it hosts life) will give the Starshot initiative a sense of urgency."</p><p>Even if Proxima b doesn't support life, Loeb says it's still important to explore the not-so-distant world.</p><p>"The lifetime of Proxima is several trillion years, almost a thousand times longer than the remaining lifetime of the Sun," he said.</p><p>"Hence, a habitable rocky planet around Proxima would be the most natural location to where our civilization could aspire to move after the Sun will die, five billions years from now." (At least one sci-fi author <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/earth-like-planet-proxima-b-colonize-kim-stanley-robinson-aurora-2016-8">thinks this is a horrible idea</a>, though.)</p><h2>A wealthy fan of space exploration</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Milner's fascination with space and <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> runs deep.</p><p>The first man in space was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin - who Milner <a href="http://time.com/3964238/yuri-milner-breakthrough-listen/">has said</a> he was named after.</p><p>Milner has also spent big money on science initiatives before, <a href="http://time.com/3964238/yuri-milner-breakthrough-listen/">saying he wants to celebrate</a> "intellectual achievement" in the same way we celebrate artistic and athletic prowess.</p><p>The Russian billionaire philanthropist has&#xa0;collaborated with Hawking in the past, too. In July 2015, the two announced a $100 million plan, called "<a href="http://www.techinsider.io/milners-100-million-search-for-aliens-2015-7">Breakthrough Listen</a>," to search the stars for intelligent extraterrestrial life.</p><p>Milner was even working on a PhD in physics before becoming a Silicon Valley investor, where he earned his fortune investing in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and Groupon.</p><p>Today he funds some of the biggest science prizes out there, including the Breakthrough Prize, which Mark Zuckerberg also supports.</p><p><em>Kevin Loria and Lauren Friedman contributed to this post.</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-launching-tiny-robots-nearest-star-alpha-centauri-2016-4">How these laser-propelled robots could bring us to a star 25 trillion miles away</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="JwcmtzMjE62UOoiv4Vw4S-kom9OujD1H" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

A Russian billionaire has a crazy plan to reach a nearby planet that might harbor life

The Prime Minister’s <keyword id="6354869" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="make-in-India">Make in India</keyword> pitch has garnered a lot of attention for its bold declaration of intent. There have been many takers for the proposal with many companies across the world hoping that the bugle has sounded on a policy shift that aims at ease of doing business, a truly open and competitive environment and an enabling policy architecture.<br />
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Closer home, there are green shoots of optimism emerging from the unlikeliest of places. At a time when economic growth in India has struggled in almost every sector, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have grown at 23% per annum and outstripped the 15% growth figures of the industrial sector in India. SMEs in India employ close to 100 million people and account for 8% of GDP. Almost half of the manufacturing sector in India is comprised by such SMEs and close to 40% of India’s exports are credited to such enterprises.<br />
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Naturally, the Make in India campaign has great resonance for the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises [MSME] sector, for it opens up huge new possibilities for existing and new enterprises. However, <strong>All India MSME Association’s (AIMA) apex micro, small and medium enterprises body</strong> has pointed out that in all the euphoria what needs to be understood, analysed and thereafter strengthened, are the factors that are fuelling the growth of SMEs and MSMEs today.<br />
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A study carried out by FICCI-Nathan in 2013 put a perspective on this situation. Analysing the Internet’s role in the performance of India’s small and medium enterprises, the report concludes that “In the last 15 years, the Internet has turned out to be one of the most promising tools which SMEs can leverage for their growth.” According to the report, a survey of 951 small and medium enterprises in various industrial and geographical clusters across India shows that of those who do use the Internet, 64% have seen an increase in sales and 69% an increase in customers.<br />
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The burgeoning eCommerce business has in fact become the carrier for growth of MSMEs thanks to a re-oriented selling environment where investments in logistics, manpower, marketing and distribution channel costs have all reduced drastically. Above all, the attention to production, the improving bottom lines and the customer satisfaction have all contributed to the success of such enterprises which are focussing on improving quality, yield and production values without having to negotiate for wafer-thin margins, deferred payments and stock gluts.<br />
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eCommerce is giving MSMEs access to markets producers could not reach or afford to reach hitherto. The IAMA-IMRB (2013) report on digital-commerce suggests that the eCommerce industry in India is expected to reach approximately 13 billion USD, showing a year-on-year growth of 34% since 2009. Availability of broadband services, increasing Internet penetration and growing purchasing power are supporting the growth of online retailing in India.<br />
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It is by now well established that eCommerce has powered MSME growth over the last few years with an intensity that was not known before and that eCommerce has the potential of transforming the MSME sector, unleashing its true potential, converting to greater scope for businesses and higher efficiencies as well as profits.<br />
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However, in spite of this spurt there are roadblocks for the growth of these online platforms that are being used by MSMEs. This needs urgent attention. The eCommerce industry is beset with policy confusion and obstructionist rules that constrict and control rather than allow unhindered growth. This is in turn directly limiting the growth potential of the MSME sector in the country. Disallowing foreign investment into the sector for direct operations by eCommerce companies are not only hobbling their operations, but also straitjacketing MSMEs.<br />
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India has now overtaken Japan to become the world's third-largest online market in terms of Internet user base, growing at 31%, after China and the US, according to research firm comScore. The number of online shoppers in the country is currently estimated at 14% of the total 74 million Internet users and has been growing at 35% over the last three years, according to an American Express study. The number of online shoppers in India is likely to reach 38 million by 2015. So, once again, while the Indian market is maturing fast, the policy framework is way behind schedule.<br />
<br /> When India with its restrictive policies does not allow <keyword id="44528" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="FDI">FDI</keyword> in <keyword id="2667031" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="B2C-eCommerce">B2C eCommerce</keyword>, in effect it means that the eCommerce player is only a transit entity, barred from securing volumes to sell directly to consumers. Naturally, economies of scale do not come into play in such an equation and the result is that neither the consumer nor the producer benefits, leaving the eCommerce player to survive on transitory, wafer-thin commissions. One needs to only look at our neighbour China to see how it has fuelled the <keyword id="2295926" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ecommerce-boom">eCommerce boom</keyword> with an enabling policy framework, occupying the global top slots both in the B2B and B2C spaces. Its MSMEs are able to use the power of the Internet to further their potential in exports.<br />
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AIMA has time and again indicated that most of India’s manufacturing activity, especially in apparel and shoes is carried out by MSMEs in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. eCommerce is giving a much needed fillip to local sourcing, where even a small manufacturer or aggregator in a <em>mofussil </em>town can sell his wares easily and without attendant business development and distribution costs at the click of a few buttons. Research suggests that eCommerce is growing at a faster rate in tier-2 and tier-3 cities clocking an average of 40% growth year-on-year. eCommerce is pushing warehousing and logistics to smaller towns for efficiency and generating employments for lakhs of youth across the country. It is freeing manufacturers of agencies and allowing them to talk and deal directly with sellers bringing down costs, improving efficiencies, benefiting both consumer and seller.<br />
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It stands to reason that FDI in B2C eCommerce will boost infrastructure development and spur manufacturing facility besides bringing in much-needed investments. MSMEs can harvest the potential of this new growth engine if allowed to operate freely. It is only then that the Make in India theme will gain currency.<br />
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<em>About the author: The article is written by Anupam Gupta, who</em> <em>is</em> <em>Convenor IT, All India MSME Association [AIMA] and Head, Strategy and Operations Dragonfly Education.</em> <br />

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