News

Japan Sets A New Internet Speed Record With 319 Terabits Per Second

That’s around 7.6 million times faster than the internet connection you probably have at home.

Published

3 years ago

October 2, 2021

David Morelo

japan sets a new internet speed record with 319 terabits per second

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Don’t you sometimes wish your internet speed was a bit faster when browsing the web, streaming online content, playing multiplayer games, or participating in a video conference? Most people do, including scientists at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). Recently, NICT set a new internet speed record when a group of its scientists successfully transferred data at 319 Terabits per second (Tbps) over a simulated 3,001-kilometer distance.

To put the record-breaking data transfer speed into perspective, the average fixed broadband download speed worldwide currently sits around 100 Mbps, which is around 3 million (yes, million) times slower. The new record is a significant achievement even as far as internet speed records go because it’s almost double the previous world record (179 Tbps), which was achieved by British and Japanese researchers in August 2020.

Transmitting data at such an unimaginably fast speed required plenty of innovation and cutting-edge technologies. Whereas typical fiber-optic cables have just one core designed for light transmission, the cable used by the team of Japanese researchers who set the new record had four cores. The transmitted data was fired using a 552-channel comb laser at multiple wavelengths and given a boost by rare earth amplifiers.

Since the entire test took place under laboratory conditions, you shouldn’t expect your local internet service provider to follow suit in the near future by implementing similar technologies due to their cost. The most likely real-world applications of the cutting-edge system involve high-speed backbone communication.

Also Read: Super Fast 6G Connectivity Is Closer Than You Think

“It is hoped that such fibers can enable practical high data-rate transmission in the near-term, contributing to the realization of the backbone communications system necessary for the spread of new communication services beyond 5G,” write NICT researchers.

Considering how much we’ve progressed since Caltech set its 186 Gbps internet speed record in 2011, we can’t help but imagine where we’ll be in another decade or two.

News

Adobe Reveals New AI Tools That Will Wow Photoshop Novices

The company is forging ahead with its Firefly-based AI features, but some professionals have copyright concerns.

Published

7 hours ago

April 24, 2024

Nour Nasir

Adobe

On Tuesday, April 23, Adobe announced a beta version of Photoshop boasting several fresh features aimed at helping users generate new images and manipulate existing files through text prompts. The latest generative AI additions harness the power of Adobe’s new Firefly Image 3 model.

Among the highlights of the update is the Generate Image tool, designed to generate images based on textual cues, providing users who struggle with a blank canvas a starting point to work from. Additionally, Generative Fill, an existing tool for background completion or image expansion, now incorporates a Reference Image function. The enhancement enables users to guide the tool’s output towards a specific aesthetic or theme by uploading an image as a reference.

adobe photoshop ai update firefly image 3 model

The new AI tools significantly simplify the process of translating creative ideas into images and should be useful to both Photoshop novices and seasoned pros. Firefly Image 3 now has the ability to produce astonishingly realistic images, and its enhanced understanding of text prompts is now considered industry-leading.

Despite facing scrutiny over its training data and a backlash from certain segments of the creative community, Adobe remains committed to integrating generative AI features into its entire software suite. The company continues to assert that Firefly is a safe, ethical option for commercial use and positions it as an alternative to competitors like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion —both of which have faced allegations of using copyrighted material without proper attribution or compensation.

Also Read: Lebanese Newspaper Builds AI President To Beat Political Crisis

Despite Adobe’s confidence in Firefly’s abilities, recent findings have uncovered that its training dataset includes AI-generated images sourced from Midjourney and similar platforms, raising questions about the integrity of Adobe’s claims regarding the model’s commercial viability.

While Adobe maintains that its generative AI models are trained on licensed or public domain content from Adobe Stock, enthusiast Nick St. Pierre recently pointed out on X (formerly Twitter) that “over 13% of all images on Adobe Stock are AI-generated,” and that “most of the generated content comes from Dalle and Midjourney”.