Sorry to bore you but we have another miracle, as IBM UK’s ads so memorably – and so controversially – heralded that gonzo of gonzo products, the System/32 (the ads were a confection of delight with angels everywhere): IBM is a bit more careful about describing anything as a miracle these days, but the lads at Yorktown Heights have made a rather important breakthrough, succeeding in measuring an electrical pulse of only half a picosecond duration; the technique enables researchers to measure the performance of Gallium Arsenide circuits that switch in as little as 10picoseconds – and a measuring device has got to be a good deal more sensitive than the thing its measuring in order to say anything.
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