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AMD to invest $400 million in India by 2028: Here’s what we know

US chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices said on Friday it will invest around $400 million in India over the next five years and will build its largest design center in the tech hub of Bengaluru. AMD’s announcement was made by its Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster at an annual semiconductor conference that started Friday in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Other speakers at the flagship event include Foxconn Chairman Young Liu and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. Despite being a late entrant, the Modi government has been courting investments into India’s nascent chip sector to establish its credentials as a chipmaking hub. AMD said it will open its new design centre campus in Bengaluru by end of this year and create 3,000 new engineering roles within five years. “Our India teams will continue to play a pivotal role in delivering the high-performance and adaptive solutions that support AMD customers worldwide,” Papermaster said. The new 500,000-square-foot (55,5...

Android phone cameras to track heart, respiratory rate: Did Google just made fitness bands obsolete?

There’s no arguing that the iPhone 12 is the best camera phone from this generation. However, it is the Pixel 4a that has the smartest camera around. Google’s AI tricks are able to keep the Pixel’s aging Sony sensor compete with the latest gazillion-megapixel cameras. It then doesn’t come as surprising to see Google figure out a way to measure the heart rate and respiratory rate using the simple cameras on its Pixel phones.

Google just detailed in one of its recent blogs the latest achievement regarding rear camera AI processing. On its Pixel devices, Google will let users measure the heart rate as well as the respiratory rate via the rear camera. The feature comes baked into the Google Fit app and is currently limited to Pixel devices only. However, Google will release it for other Android phones in the future.

Pixel cameras can measure heart, respiratory rate

Measuring heart rate directly from the phone isn’t a new concept. Those who keep a tab of the history of smartphones may recall Samsung’s Galaxy S and Note devices featuring optical sensors. The phones used to feature the sensor just alongside the main rear camera. Samsung eventually dropped the feature starting from the Galaxy S10 Lite and newer models.

Google’s trick does not involve additional sensors. In fact, it uses the main camera and a bunch of smart observations to monitor the data. For heart rate, the user is required to place his/her finger on the rear camera. The app detects the color change as blood moves through the fingertip and sues its smart algorithms to give out the data.

Camera tracking, google, pixel,

Source: Google

Similarly, for the respiratory rate, the person is required to cover the face as well as the chest inside the viewfinder. The app will then observe the movement of the chest using machine learning, similar to an actual doctor.

While this is smart, Google says that both these features give an idea of overall wellness. One should not use them for medical diagnosis. In other words, your Fitbit or Apple Watch will consistently offer reliable data over the course of time.

That said, Google’s internal testing suggested that data is consistently closer to that of a medical-grade monitoring device. The respiratory rate feature was accurate within one breath per minute while the heart rate feature was accurate within 2 percent. This comes after testing on a wide variety of people.



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