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In 2005, IBM’s $2-million BlueGene supercomputer took 80 minutes to process the same data that eight million cerebral-cortex neurons—a fraction of the brain’s total—handle in one second. Now bioengineer Kwabena Boahen of Stanford University has built a microchip that could help computers catch up.

In 2005, IBM’s $2-million BlueGene supercomputer took 80 minutes to process the same data that eight million cerebral-cortex neurons—a fraction of the brain’s total—handle in one second. Now bioengineer Kwabena Boahen of Stanford University has built a microchip that could help computers catch up.

We’re not sure which is scarier, getting lost in the woods or being rescued by a swarm of mini robotic grasshoppers. But it’s search-and-rescue situations that a Swiss robotics lab had in mind when they built the world’s smallest hopping robot.

Making processors for mobile gadgets is mostly an afterthought. Hone a chip from a desktop PC, tweak it to suck less power and vent less heat, and stick it in a laptop. Not so with Intel’s Atom. It’s Intel’s smallest-ever microprocessor, a 24-square-millimeter chip crammed with 47 million data-carrying transistors, and it’s paving the way for the next era of affordable, power-saving gadgets.

Digital cameras keep packing in the pixels, but they can’t hide the truth: Photos are flat. Now, engineers at Stanford University have developed a way to bring 3-D clarity and depth to the world of 2-D photography.