Yikai Su

A conventional computer sees the world flat: numbers are just points on a line. But a color image or a 3D scene demands more — four numbers that describe both position and rotation. Such quadruples are called quaternions, and until now electronics handled them clumsily, breaking them apart and reassembling them. The new chip changes the approach.

A conventional spectrometer is like a comb that untangles light and sorts it by wavelength. But a comb is rigid: one type of light needs one comb, another needs a different one. The new device works differently. It asks light a series of questions, changing its shape each time to glean more meaning from the answers.