A memory chip that can compute

Resistance for change

ELECTRONICS has long relied on a division of labour. At the heart of myriad devices, from computers and smartphones to drones and dishwashers, a microprocessor can be found busily crunching data. Switch the power off, though, and this chip will forget everything. Devices therefore contain other, different sorts of chips that work as a memory. That is inefficient, because shuffling data between the two types of chip costs time and energy. Now, though, a group of researchers working in Singapore and Germany think they have found a way to make a single chip work as both a processor and a memory.

Both sorts of existing chip rely on transistors. These are tiny electronic switches, the ons and offs of which represent the ones and zeroes of the digital age. In the quest for speed, a processor’s transistors need to be able to flip rapidly between those two states. This speed is bought, however, at the cost of the forgetfulness that makes a separate memory essential. Meanwhile, the non-forgetful transistors used in a computer’s permanent form of memory are too slow to make useful processors. To make a chip which…Continue reading
Source: Economist