Rethinking conventional computer designs, which are decades old, the U.S. Department of Energy has set its sights on creating systems that could supplant today's PCs and servers. The Los Alamos National Laboratory--best known for its work with nuclear weapons--is developing and acquiring new types of computers as it looks to replace conventional computers. Its newest toy is a D-Wave 2X quantum computer, which the lab purchased from D-Wave Systems for an undisclosed price. The acquisition of the D-Wave quantum computer fits LANL's goal to understand new forms of computing and how they apply to different applications, said John Sarrao, associate director for Theory, Simulation, and Computation at LANL. LANL is also researching neuromorphic chips inspired by the functioning of the brain.

D-Wave Systems said Monday that the company has signed a seven-year deal with Google, NASA, and the Universities Space Research Association to supply D-Wave's quantum computers as part of an ongoing investigation to see whether they could be used as the next artificial intelligence platform. Installation of a new D-Wave 2X system was recently completed, the companies said. The system, now operational, includes a 1000 qubit quantum processor. "At 1000 qubits, the D-Wave 2X quantum processor evaluates all 21000 possible solutions simultaneously as it converges on optimal or near optimal solutions, more possibilities than there are particles in the observable universe," the company claims. Quantum computers will use qubits, or quantum bits, which rely on laws of quantum mechanics to achieve various states.

AMD's recent chips haven't rocked Intel's PC market dominance, but new chips based on the company's Zen architecture aim to change that next year. On Wednesday it shared initial details about the new FX and seventh-generation A-series chips, which are the brainchild of Jim Keller, a leading mobile chip designer at Apple until AMD hired him in 2012. The new AMD chips will battle Intel's highly anticipated Skylake line, which is designed to bring new wireless charging and data transfer features to laptops. Building on the launch of the fourth generation of its enterprise software suite earlier this year, SAP unveiled the cloud version of S/4Hana at its Sapphire conference on Wednesday. SAP expects most companies to opt for hybrid scenarios combining the on-premises version of the in-memory database platform with the new cloud version.

For example, NASA and General Motors built the 300 pound Robonaut2 - or R2 - a robot that is capable of using the same tools as humans and now works alongside them in space onboard the International Space Station. R2 can use its hands to do work beyond the scope of prior humanoid machines and can easily work safely alongside people, a necessity both on Earth and in space, NASA stated. It is also stronger: able to lift, not just hold, a 20-pound weight (about four times heavier than what other dexterous robots can handle) both near and away from its body. Granted the robot takes up valuable space station space, but it doesn't have to be fed or go to the bathroom - major advantages in space. Other robots such as the Octoroach being developed by UC Berkeley researchers can crawl into all manner of super-secret surveillance or emergency recovery applications that the human body just could not.

Would you trust your computer to interact on a deep personal touchy-feely level with you, reading, interpreting, reacting, or storing your emotions? Most of us at some point have had one of those days when we've tried sweet-talking or cussing a malfunctioning computer, but what if the computer apologized? What if computers could sense your emotions and respond appropriately? Yet we are posed on the brink of computers recognizing and responding to users' emotions. An engineering and consulting firm, Design Interactive, reports it partnered with VRSonic to develop an Affective Virtual Environment Training System (A-VETS), a tool that uses "noninvasive" methods of evaluating emotional responses in real time. The A-VETS tool is targeted at military training and research community needs.

Early indications suggest that Watson will be favored in its competition against Jennings and Rutter since the supercomputer already beat its opponents in a practice round in January. But Watson is not an unstoppable machine and does have its weaknesses, especially if the clue involves a high degree of wordplay or ambiguity. It's anybody's guess who will win tonight, but in honor of what may be Watson's intellectual triumph over humanity, here is a look at the rise of the supercomputer in human history. Watson is seen as a giant leap forward in artificial intelligence because to play Jeopardy it had to understand and answer English language questions using idioms and common expressions. This is unlike previous computers, which required specific input keywords before they could respond to human speech.

While debate on military robots heated up this month thanks to UN talks about the development of lethal autonomous robots--and military robots are evolving quickly thanks to defense budgets--household robots remain far from ubiquitous. More than a half-century after the world's first industrial robot, Unimate, began work at a General Motors plant, most commercial robots still work in factories. The ones that are in households, such as the roughly 10 million robot vacuum cleaners led by iRobot's Roomba, have usually been limited to performing one task only, like sucking up dirt. Computers and robots can beat us at dedicated tasks like chess or painting cars, though humans still have a massive intelligence advantage in terms of general knowledge. That's a good thing if you fear a robot uprising.

For decades, scientists have fantasized about creating robots with brain-like intelligence. This year, researchers tempted by that dream made great progress on achieving what has been called the holy grail of computing. Today, a wide variety of efforts are aimed at creating intelligent computers that can progressively learn and make smarter decisions. Millions of dollars this year were poured in efforts to create "silicon brains," or neuromorphic chips that mimic brain-like functionality to make computers smarter. The new chips could give eyes and ears to smart robots, which will be able to drive, identify objects, or even point out rotten fruit.

Google has acquired Boston Dynamics, a company that builds robots that mimic the movements of humans and animals with stunning dexterity and speed. "We are looking forward to this next chapter in robotics and in what we can accomplish as part of the Google team," Boston Dynamics co-founder Marc Raibert said via email. Boston Dynamics is the eighth robotics company that Google has acquired in the past six months, according to The New York Times, which first reported the news on Friday. Earlier this month, the Times reported that Google has named former Android chief Andy Rubin as the company's lead for its robotics projects. On its YouTube channel, Boston Dynamics has videos of its impressive robots, including WildCat, a four-legged robot designed to run fast in all terrains, Cheetah, which tops 28 miles-per-hour, and Petman, a human-like robot that balances himself as he walks, squats and does calisthenics, and simulates human physiology by controlling its temperature, humidity and sweating, according to the company.

Text-mining software is one of the front-line tools that the government is now using to tease out valuable connections. These specialized search engines can quickly sift through mountains of unstructured text anything that's not carefully arranged in a database or spreadsheet and pull out the meaningful stuff. They can infer relationships within data that are not stated explicitly. It is something we do all the time automatically but is enormously complicated for computers. "We bridge the gap between information and action," says Barak Pridor, CEO of ClearForest, a text-mining company.