InfoQ Homepage Emerging Technologies Content on InfoQ
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Grain: Your WebAssembly-First Programming Language - WebAssembly Summit 2021
Oscar Spencer recently presented Grain, a new strongly-typed, high-level language that compiles to WebAssembly. Grain includes functional programming features (e.g., type inference, pattern matching, closures) while allowing mutable variables. Grain also has a standard library with composite data structures (Option, Stack, Result) and system calls (e.g., I/O, process handling).
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Microsoft Opens up Its Azure Quantum Platform for Public Preview
Announced at Ignite 2019, Azure Quantum is a full-stack, cloud ecosystem enabling access to diverse quantum hardware and software. Aimed at developers, researchers, and customers, Azure Quantum is now in public preview.
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New Raspberry Pico Micro-Controller Brings Versatility and Small Size Factor
The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released the Pico, a small, inexpensive micro-controller board based on a custom-designed RP2040 chip. The RP2040 has two ARM cores clocking at 133MHz, 264KB internal SRAM, and 2MB QSPI Flash. The Pico enables a large range of applications with a wide range of flexible I/O options (I2C, SPI, PWM, 8 Programmable I/O state machines for custom peripheral support).
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New Chrome Extension to Debug Compiled Wasm Code Stepping through C++ Source Files
Google recently presented the progress made by the Chrome DevTools teams to improve the developer experience of debugging WebAssembly files. A new extension (in beta) allows developers to debug C and C++ apps compiled to WebAssembly by stepping through the original source code.
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Google Phases out Android Things
Google recently announced phasing out its Android Things IoT platform. New projects will not be accepted after January 5, 2021, and the Android Things console will be turned down for all projects in 2022.
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The WebThings Iot Platform Continues on Its Own after Mozilla Disengages from Iot
David Bryant recently announced that Mozilla WebThings becomes WebThings and leaves the Mozilla umbrella to become an independent community-led open source project. The project’s website also moves from Mozilla IoT webpage to its own (webthings.io). The move ensures the continuity of operations for the WebThings user base while Mozilla continues to focus on its restructuration.
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The NM180100 Enables Low-Energy Edge and Endpoint Computing with Short and Long-Range Communication
Northern Mechatronics announced NM180100, its latest LoRa Bluetooth 5 low-energy module for IoT applications. The NM180100 uses an Apollo3 Blue microprocessor to achieve low power consumption in all operating states of the device together with versatile communication capabilities in a single package module solution.
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Markdown-Wasm, a Very Fast Markdown Parser Written in WebAssembly
Rasmus Andersson released markdown-wasm, a very fast Markdown parser ported from C to WebAssembly. markdown-wasm is twice as fast as the best JavaScript Markdown parser in one benchmark. markdown-wasm remains additionally small (31KB gzipped).
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Microsoft Introduces Its Quantum Intermediate Representation
Based on LLVM, IBM Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR) extends LLVM IR to better suit the representation of quantum constructs.
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WebAssembly Reference Types Implemented in wasmtime, Lets Wasm Modules Handle Complex Types
Nick Fitzgerald recently announced the implementation of the WebAssembly reference types proposal in wasmtime. With reference types, a WebAssembly runtime can handle references to complex host objects (e,g, DOM nodes) instead of only integer and floating-point values. Reference types pave the way for more WebAssembly features – interface types, garbage collection, module linking, and more.
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Robot Learns to Cook the Perfect Omelette Using Batch Bayesian Optimization
Researchers from the university of Cambridge trained a robot to prepare an omelette and optimized the recipe to produce well-tasting dishes. To find the most objectively best recipe, the researchers turned towards Bayesian optimization techniques. They investigated two methods: sequential Bayesian optimization and batch Bayesian optimization.
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MIT Researchers Claim to Have Found a Way to Scale up Quantum Chips
In a recent paper published in Nature, MIT researchers have described a process to manufacture "artificial atoms" that can be integrated to create larger-scale quantum chips. As a proof of this, they built a 128-qubit chip, the largest yet.
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Quantum Machines Launches Universal Language for Quantum Computer Orchestration
Tel Aviv-based startup Quantum Machines launched a new language for quantum orchestration, QUA, aiming to become the first standard universal language for quantum computers. InfoQ has taken the chance to speak with Dr. Itamar Sivan, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Machines, to learn more about this new technology.
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WebAssembly Extended with Hot Reloading, Remote Debugging and Uniform Hardware Access
Researchers recently presented WARDuino, an extension to WebAssembly targeting microcontrollers. WARDuino addresses common development pain points by adding live code updates, remote debugging, and access to the microcontroller’s hardware modules. WARDuino’s virtual machine runs five times faster than Espruino (a popular JavaScript interpreter for microcontrollers) on some benchmarks.
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Paddle Quantum: Bringing Baidu Deep Learning Perform to Quantum Computing
Baidu has announced quantum machine learning toolkit Paddle Quantum, which makes it possible to build and train quantum neural network models. Paddle Quantum aims to support advanced quantum computing applications as well as to allow developers new to quantum machine learning to create their models step-by-step.