An energy-recycling computer circuit born at the University of Michigan will enable a new generation of power efficient laptop PCs and servers.

Global semiconductor vendor Advanced Micro Devices announced Monday at the 2012 International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco that the company’s forthcoming 64-bit processor core, dubbed “Piledriver,” incorporates a technology invented by a Michigan Engineering computer science professor and his graduate students.

Their patented technique resulted in the launch of UM start-up Cyclos Semiconductor in 2006. The technology, called a “resonant clock mesh,” reduces the total power consumption of the processor core by up to 10 percent. The Piledriver core will be used in multicore computer chips destined for desktops, laptops and servers.

“In such top-of-the-line processor cores, saving any amount of power without sacrificing performance has been unthinkable up until now. And with multiple such cores used in each computer chip, total power savings can be quite substantial,” said Marios Papaefthymiou, chair of computer science and engineering at UM. Papaefthymiou is one of the developers of the technology, as well as co-founder and president of Cyclos.

For consumers, this savings will translate into improvements in performance, price, and battery life, the researchers say. For operators of large farms of computer servers, it could save hundreds of kilowatts and reduce electricity bills.

“The evolution of computer chip performance has slowed down considerably in the past several years, and it’s all because of power constraints,” he said. “Electronic devices have the capability to do more, but they cannot dissipate all the heat that would generate. Our technology allows for substantial reduction in power consumption and, therefore, heat generation, enabling designers to realize the performance potential of these devices. “

Papaefthymiou’s innovation cuts energy use in the most power-hungry part of the processor — the clock that coordinates activity across the circuit. In high-performance processors, the clock can eat up 30 percent of the chip’s power. The new resonant clock mesh technology actually recycles electric charge that conventional clock designs dissipate as heat. It accomplishes this by adding to the chip inductors; that is, wire coils that can store energy in magnetic fields. These inductors, coupled with existing capacitors that store energy in electric fields, create highly efficient “tank circuits.” Tank circuits are reminiscent of pendulums, swinging energy back and forth between the electric and the magnetic fields, and allowing for energy to be harvested and re-used.

When AMD begins manufacturing chips that use its Piledriver processor, it will be the first large-volume commercial deployment of a resonant clock technology.

The integration of the technology into Piledriver was performed in collaboration with Cyclos Semiconductor, a University of Michigan start-up with offices in Ann Arbor and Berkeley Calif., founded in 2006 through the University of Michigan Office of Technology Transfer.

Researchers from UM, AMD and Cyclos presented a technical paper on the subject Monday at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. The paper is titled “Resonant Clock Design for a Power-Efficient High-Volume x86-64 Microprocessor.”

The Awesome News Taskforce launches this month in Detroit, making it the 30th chapter of the Awesome Foundation worldwide.

This taskforce is comprised of 19 Trustees and a Dean, who will all oversee this initiative in the upcoming year. Each month, the trustees will award metro Detroiters $1,000 micro-grants for innovative journalism and civic media projects that create ripples of inspiration and engagement throughout the city. Their first grant will be awarded in March, then every month thereafter for the entire year in 2012.

Tim Hwang started the Awesome Foundation in Boston In July of 2009. It has since expanded to 30 chapters around the world, giving out a total of nearly $40,000 so far. To extend the Awesome model to more serious endeavors, the Institute of Higher Awesome Studies, Inc. (IHAS) was born in February 2011. Armed with a Knight News Challenge (www.knightfoundation.org/funding-initiatives/knight-news-challenge/) grant, the Awesome News Taskforce was started.

The taskforce is looking to fund news-related projects that are not mainstream stories. Marshalle Montgomery, Dean of the Taskforce says, “We’re looking for citizen reporters. People who have ideas for creating  unique projects that will help the community and will use non-traditional media outlets to get that story out to others through social media, community news, mobile apps, etc.”

Ryan Blair, the company’s CEO, is an entrepreneur and the author of “Nothing To Lose, Everything To Gain.” In his book, he talks about his struggles growing up, and his journey from gang member to a successful entrepreneur and multimillionaire investor.

Blair founded his first company, 24/7 Tech, at the age of 21 and has founded and sold numerous businesses since, including SkyPipeline – a Southern California-based provider of wireless broadband.

His latest success has been the overhaul of Visalus Sciences. Visalus is a manufacturer of weight loss and nutrition products, and is the company behind the Body by Vi Challenge, a national weight loss challenge. Just this past Monday, Visalus generated national media interest when it announced the acquisition of some pricy web domains.

Via Techcrunch:

We’ve learned that ViSalus Sciences, a direct sales “health transformation company” that distributes weight management and nutritional supplement products, has entered the shortlist of pricey domain name buyers. The creators of the so-called “Body By Vi Challenge,” which (among other things) is a 90-day contest that offers people health products, support, and cash prizes in an effort to incentivize them to achieve their weight loss and fitness goals, announced today that it has acquired “challenge.com” and “vi.com.”

Together, the domain names were purchased by ViSalus for $500,000 and $325,000, respectively. The purchase of “challenge.com” alone is one of the top ten most expensive domain names bought in 2011, through today. At a combined value of $825,000, the two domains together would be the fourth highest purchase over that time, and individually “challenge.com” and “vi.com” are the second and third most expensive buys of domain names this year, behind only the million-dollar “dudu.com.”

Those in Detroit have the opportunity to hear from Ryan Blair this Friday evening at Startup Weekend Detroit, as he and Benzinga founder Jason Raznick kick off the weekend event.
Via WXYZ:

NewME was launched last year to support minority entrepreneurs, and UBI was one of over 300 applicants vying for entry into the incubator program.

UBI founder James Norman isn’t the first Detroiter to make it into NewMe, Detroit’s Hajj Flemings was a participant in NewME’s inaugural class last year. If the name NewME rings a bell somewhere, it’s likely because the incubator gained a massive amount of exposure on CNN late last year, via a program called Black in America. The program gained scrutiny in the Tech community after technology writer Michael Arrington claimed in a interview (seen here) that he didn’t know ‘a single black entrepreneur’. (Arrington later reacted in kind on his blog.)

However, beyond any past controversy, NewME offers tremdendous opportunity for Minority-led startups. Their advisory board is comprised of industry heavyweights like Vivek Wadhwa, Hiten Shah, and Chris Hutchins.

We recently caught up with Norman to find out more…

What made NewME your choice over incubators like Techstars and YCombinator?

Til then,  I need to quickly find out if my company will be a lasting entity or fly by night. Of course, I believe the former, but the best way to know is go to the Valley.

Having a group of experienced VCs and start-up CEOs critique your product / team is the fastest way to know what direction to take your company if you ask me.  For example, if every VC tells you they would never invest in your product, and you need capital to move forward, it might be time to rethink your strategy (or take out a bunch of credit cards to prove them wrong haha).  I’m excited to grow my network in the start-up community, put my product to the test to get direct feedback and …lets not lie…it’s cold in the D right now haha, getting away from the snow for a bit is great too.

Let me make one thing clear so you don’t continue reading under false pretenses:  I was just one small part of the winning team in Ann Arbor, Michigan and on the business side at that.

Based on our championship experience, I submit the following recipe for success for those attending future Startup Weekends, including the one kicking off in Detroit on February 17th, 2012.

1. Know Your Audience.  The other attendees are not the judges, but they are a key to your success.  The majority of participants in A2 were male University of Michigan students; as such, our startup had to be one they would be excited about.  Enter RapRoulette.

2. Recruit people from each of these four disciplines: business/marketing, front end development, back end development, and design.  If you’re missing a quadrant, you should consider bailing and join another team.

3. Build a large team.  Ten people can get done twice the work of five people.

4. Steal one of the mentors.  Convince them to work exclusively on your idea for the entire weekend.

5. SMVP – Streamlined MVP.  The product doesn’t even need to reach viable stage; it just needs the bare essentials to survive a sixty second demo… controlled by you.  You do not need anyone else to be able to use your product.  However, that demo does need to give everyone a taste of how great your team’s idea is and/or can be.

6. 10/20/30 = 5/5/30. Utilize topics from Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule as a guide, but turn it into five slides in five minutes at thirty point font.  Remember your demo also needs to fit within that same five minutes.

7. Check your presentation against the judging criteria again and again.  Criteria must be covered.  Everything else, cut.

8. Explain your idea via demo.  Do this first i.e. before any other part of your presentation.

9. Practice, practice, practice.

10. Get some sleep.

Of course, this blueprint may be overtaken by a better idea tomorrow…

Recently, cofounder Chase Lee was awarded title of Entrepreneur of the Year at the University of Michigan, where he studies as a Business student. We recently caught up with Chase to find out more about the award, and how he juggles life as both a startup cofounder, and full time student…

Tell me more about Entrepreneurial outreach at the University of Michigan?

It’s an exciting time to be a student at U-M. It’s getting to a point where if you haven’t heard about Entrepreneurship, you’re probably just not listening…

Every student entering into the engineering program will hear about M-powered and the other Entrepreneurial resources supported by the University.

We have classes like the Entrepreneurship Hour class – one of the biggest efforts on campus, with over 400 students that take this elective course. U-M’s Center for Entrepreneurship even took a bus to the lean startup conference in Grand Rapids early last year.

Techarb, an incubator supported by the Center for Entrepreneurship, the Zell Lurie Institute, and the Office of Vice President Research, gives Fetchnotes an office for recruiting, working, and hackathons/team meetings.

Back in November, we featured a post written by your partner in Fetchnotes, Alex Schiff, that covered a recent press push you did for the company. Will you talk a little more about Fetchnotes and it’s media appeal?

We currently have about 2400 users in a closed beta. The media push took us from 200 users when we first started, to adding 1,000 within a week. This was through features in ReadWriteWeb, AllthingsD, Wall Street Journal, and of course Grow Detroit. We wanted to keep the numbers small, to ensure we reach out to each new user right now to gain valuable member input and feedback.

What’s next for Fetchnotes?

We’re building in the use of the @ tag. It’s the simple nature of being able to quickly direct a memo toward an individual or group of people on Fetchnotes – launching publicly in the next month as well.

When did you start coding?

I started when I was about ten years old. I had an interest in taking computers apart and fixing them, and I took the initiative to learn programming. I started with C++, then PHP, and eventually Python — which is the programming language that Fetchnotes was built in.

You’re a full-time student, and a cofounder of a startup. What’s your day-to-day look like?

In addition to my classes, I work as a part-time developer for the school of Kinesiology at U-M. I typically work on their website during the day, in between classes and studying. Then I break from 5-6 for dinner, meetings, etc. Then I try to work on Fetchnotes for five hours or so. On weekends, time is spent between Fetchnotes and homework.

Sounds like you have a lot on your plate. How do you Filter out Distractions?

For a while, I was extremely busy doing freelance development. You want to help out friends and all, but it’s time consuming and ultimately you have to learn to say no to the things that aren’t integral to executing on your passion. Alex and i were also working on other startups that we ultimately filtered out to focus on one. Once we consciously made this choice as a team, Fetchnotes started seriously gaining traction.

See video of Chase accepting his award here:

Execute!

Facebook Design’s affirmation “Getting it done is better than doing it perfect” is found throughout company’s offices. When I heard this phrase I instantly contrasted it with the adage, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”Both ideas, unfortunately, are wrong.

It’s easy to generalize, but accurate to contextualize. The best solution to the Polish vs. Produce debate is fluid: “Have as much quality as you need, and nothing more.” This is disturbingly true with airline safety; planes are initially built to be as safe as possible, with safety features gradually removed to reduce cost while still adhering to safety regulations. Even if you’re not starting an airline, this lesson is ideal to remember as an entrepreneur.

What are you training for?

There’s a strong debate to execute ASAP (lean methodologies are all the rage), to release incomplete software and source user feedback for improvements: capture more utility and reduce opportunity costs by satisfying VS maximizing – which can take forever. In his TED talk “The Paradox of Choice,” Barry Schwartz argues that with exponentially growing options, the drive for a perfect decision can be overwhelming and actually limit one’s options. Just acting, or “settling for satisfying” is the way to go. At some point, he says, pull the trigger and get on with your life.

That’s usually true, and a critical factor for budding companies. When you’re resource constrained, making due with a prototype will get you farther than exhausting your cash to achieve a level of unattainable polish. In my early days of marketing, I’d loathe to send anything less than a robust and detailed customer service letter. But do cranky customers really need all that? Most people are satisfied with an acknowledgement and brief answer. They move on, question answered. Even condensed quick replies are better than nothing when you’re running to the next appointment and need to just get it done.

But there is a pitfall to things like Lifehacker’s Done Manifesto: A lack of excellence.

What’s more impressive?

•New phones in 2011: 35 Nokia models or 1 iPhone?
•Ten quick jogs, or running a marathon?
•U Phoenix’s 319,000 undergrads, or Stanford’s 6900?

Launching an inferior product just to slap the execute button can make you look stupid. Do you really have the requisite skill to have your product hold up to established top dogs of the industry? Are you actually going to be proud of your creation? If not, how can you expect others to be? Is more really better?

Don’t confuse busy with productive. Satisfaction from crossing items off a to-do list is amateur; fulfillment from a major, polished accomplishment is well deserved and lasting.

If you were hiring a bodyguard, would you prefer someone who “got” his black belt from a 3-year program, or a lower ranked, dedicated martial artist who lived and breathed his practice?

The joys of execution can easily mask the more substantive benefits of the lasting, the truly complete. The key to balanced productivity and true mastery lies in accurate discernment and prioritizing of what will have the most scalable impact.

What to Execute:
Basic communication
Delegation
Prototypes
Brief tasks that enable others’ work (or restrict it if left undone)
Filler content
Basic Operations

What to Polish:
Platforms and mediums for future work
Hallmarks (What you’re known for)
Culture
Design
Systems
Relationships

A basic rule of thumb: If you do it often, just get it done. If you do it rarely, if it’s supposed to stand out, spend more time on it. Learn to instantly judge the ripple effect your action will have over time. The more ripples, the bigger the stone and better your aim.

If you’ve not enough bandwidth to truly polish what matters, check out Randy Pausch’s lecture on Time Management. It’s more practical than his inspiring Last Lecture, and is very specific.

AwakeBlogger’s enhanced Covey Matrix.

In the creative content world, contracts are ubiquitous. Whether it’s securing permission to film or photograph at a particular location, contracting the terms of your talent or ironing out expectations of a client, the rule is: get it in writing. Particularly clients. People change their mind, “forget” and get side-tracked into different projects all the time. They change phone numbers and addresses. The people you’ve spent hours of meeting time developing personal connections with will change jobs, or get laid off. As Dennis Cahill notes, many start-ups innovate to make existing services available to a new market segment, which means that your customers may simply be unaccustomed to paying for your service. If you ever make the mistake of completing work without signing a payment contract, unless that client has been a personal childhood friend or blood-relative of yours, you should not expect to be paid, ever. Anecdotal experiences to the contrary are the result of luck. If one of your business partners say “let’s trust this guy, he seems honest and I have a good relationship with him” be twice as suspicious than if the person was a complete stranger. Why? Because duplicity is really the only way you can actually get something for nothing. For some people, every human interaction represents such an opportunity.

Businesses who get part or all of their revenue from services know to be careful. Those that aren’t are eventually going to get burned. But what about if you’re careful, if you get everything in writing and signed and witnessed? Is that enough? Not a chance. Why? Because you’re a start-up, that’s why. If someone decides that they don’t want to pay you, they know that your recourse is most likely a law-suit. They know that means time in court and money for legal fees that no one in your company has. Depending on how their business is doing, maybe there wouldn’t be anything worth suing over. They know that they can wear you down, play the waiting game and eventually they’ll win. They calculate (correctly) that the recourse against enforcing a contract is usually not a plausible option for most creatives. By the way, these power-driven relationships are also true of freelancers, see Robert Bowen’s excellent article on recourse that independent designers and developers have against non-payment.

This difficulty with enforcing agreements can be a substantial source of anxiety for service-driven start-ups. The ball can always seem to be in the client’s court, as you wonder if payment will ever be forthcoming. The trick to managing this problem is controlling the conditions under which the ball crosses from one party’s court to another.

Many service businesses simply demand payment up front, but for start-ups who may be trying to get customers to try something new, this is often not a realistic option. At the outset, you need to be open with your clients about the need to be compensated in a timely manner. You need to set deadlines for compensation that parallel the deadlines for final product delivery, and make sure that these are explicit, in writing and mutually agreed upon. Scheduled payment plans or deposits are a good way to do this, since they create routines and expectations – after a manager has breached the psychological barrier or paying for a new service, perhaps something that they’ve never paid for before, it will be easier for them to do it again. As Ted Hollified has noted, you never have as much leverage as during the contract negotiation phase, so if figure out what your make-or-break clauses are early, and don’t get mealy-mouthed about saying what they are. It’s important that companies take chances on start-ups, and there’s a lot of opportunity out there. But it’s equally important for start-ups to be aware of the dangers of getting burned, and to not give up every ounce of leverage in a service arrangement at the outset, relying on the good nature and intrinsic benevolence of clients as a guarantor of badly-needed revenue.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Held on Friday, January 27th at the University of Michigan, the FuturTech 2012 conference promises to bring together students, speakers, panelists, and companies around the topic of disruptive trends in technology.

The conference is hosted jointly by the Ross School of Business, the School of Information, and College of Engineering at U-M.

They recently announced that the application period for the demo showcase has been extended through Wednesday, January 11th. 

Prizes for the best showcase participants include an opportunity to pitch for Detroit Venture Partners, startup legal consulting and more.  At the very least, it would prove great exposure for your startup project.

The past couple years, FuturTech has been able to garner impressive panelists including Alexis Ohanian, the cofounder of Reddit (and, more recently, an advisor to travel site Hipmunk), and Lindsay Aspegren (A Venture Capitalist from North Coast Technology Investors) that I had the pleasure of meeting back in November at Fundingpost (where he absolutely crushed it on a VC panel).

This years event should not fail to impress — with a keynote by Dave Girouard, Google’s President of Enterprise (and a Michigan-alum). Additional panelists include Dave Ward, Amazon’s lead product Manager for EC2, and Jake Cohen, Principal at Detroit Venture Partners.

With the New Year here I have finally commenced my Organic Challenge: five months of only eating whole foods. It’s a challenge I’ve been looking forward to starting for over a month.

Don’t worry- this post isn’t another why-you-need-organic-food posts. God knows we have enough of those.

The topic is this: Does the information you consume help you toward your goals, or does it make you sick?

As a new entrepreneur I’m consistently trying to control what comes in my body, my mind and my business. It’s fuel or poison in my opinion.

I am convinced that most obese people are actually hungry. Even though they eat massive amounts of calories, they eat calories that have no nutrition in them. So they’re left with a stomach full of crap and yet their bodies are starving for something real.

Take a look at the information we consume every day: the blog posts, the twitter followers, the annoying subscription emails. There’s so much to consume! And yet, like food, there really is only so much we actually need to thrive and be extraordinary.

Are you becoming obese on too much irrelevant information? Maybe it’s time to cut the crap and consume stuff that actually gets you to your ideal.