The feature image you see above was generated by an AI text-to-image rendering model called Stable Diffusion typically runs in the cloud via a web browser, and is driven by data center servers with big power budgets and a ton of silicon horsepower. However, the image above was generated by Stable Diffusion running on a smartphone, without a connection to that cloud data center and running in airplane mode, with no connectivity whatsoever. And the AI model rendering it was powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile chip on a device that operates at under 7 watts or so.
It took Stable Diffusion only a few short phrases and 14.47 seconds to render this image.
This is an example of a 540p pixel input resolution image being scaled up to 4K resolution, which results in much cleaner lines, sharper textures, and a better overall experience. Though Qualcomm has a non-algorithmic version of this available today, called Snapdragon GSR, someday in the future, mobile enthusiast gamers are going to be treated to even better levels of image quality without sacrificing battery life and with even higher frame rates.
This is just one example of gaming and media enhancement with pre-trained and quantized machine learning models, but you can quickly think of a myriad of applications that could benefit greatly, from recommendation engines to location-aware guidance, to computational photography techniques and more.
OTTAWA, May 15 (Reuters) — Automaker Stellantis (STLAM.MI) has stopped all construction at a more-than C$5 billion ($3.74 billion) electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant in Windsor, Canada, over a disagreement with the federal government about subsidies, a spokesperson for the company said on Monday.
“Effective immediately, all construction related to the battery module production on the Windsor site has stopped,” the spokesperson said.
Canada’s industry ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After a successful flight test campaign over the last two years with its two Maker aircraft, final assembly is now complete on Archer’s first Midnight aircraft and Archer is now preparing for its planned first flight this summer.
Scientists from Jilin University, the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, and Skoltech have synthesized lanthanum-cerium polyhydride, a material that promises to facilitate studies of near-room-temperature superconductivity. It offers a compromise between the polyhydrides of lanthanum and cerium in terms of how much cooling and pressure it requires. This enables easier experiments, which might one day lead scientists to compounds that conduct electricity with zero resistance at ambient conditions—an engineering dream many years in the making. The study was published in Nature Communications.
One of the most intriguing unsolved questions in modern physics is: Can we make a material that conducts electricity with zero resistance (superconducts) at room temperature and atmospheric pressure? Such a superconductor would enable power grids with unprecedented efficiency, ultrafast microchips, and electromagnets so powerful they could levitate trains or control fusion reactors.
In their search, scientists are probing multiple classes of materials, slowly nudging up the temperature they superconduct at and decreasing the pressure they require to remain stable. One such group of materials is polyhydrides—compounds with extremely high hydrogen content. At −23°C, the current champion for high-temperature superconductivity is a lanthanum polyhydride with the formula LaH10. The trade-off: It requires the pressure of 1.5 million atmospheres. At the opposite end of the spectrum, cuprates are a class of materials that superconduct under normal atmospheric pressure but require cooler temperatures —no more than −140°.
The team takes AI personalization to a whole new level.
Researchers at the School of Engineering at Princeton University have successfully deployed a large language model (LLM) to help a robotic manipulator make sense of instructions to tidy up a room.
Robotic arms, or manipulators, are great at performing assigned tasks. In a factory setup, the manipulator can assemble machine parts, paint cars and even carve sculptures. However, get one at home, and the robot is clueless. It could turn the house upside down for a simple instruction such as “tidy up the room.”
David Risher also told CNN the company wants to make travel less stressful, and he doesn’t think Uber and Lyft need to destroy each other to succeed.
In the 1930s the Dust Bowl decimated the U.S. Midwest. Are current conditions pointing to a reoccurrence in the 21st century?
A dust storm between St. Louis and Chicago led to a 72-vehicle pileup and 7 deaths recently. Conditions are ripe for more of the same.