China's efforts to ramp up semiconductor innovation seem to bear more fruits as the Tsinghua University has successfully developing the world's first fully system-integrated memristor computing-in-memory chip that supports efficient on-chip learning, which is also energy efficient.
The chip, though still in the laboratory phase, is expected to promote development in artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous driving, wearable devices and other high-tech fields.
Developed by a team in the School of Integrated Circuits in Tsinghua University, the advanced chip has an cutting-edge advantage as it consumes energy that is only 3 percent of an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) system for on-chip learning, which will greatly meet demand for increased computing efficiency in the era of AI, said the research team from the university.
The research paper has been published in the September edition of "Science."
It took the team about 11 years to complete the job starting from the research on using memristors for storage application. Memristor is the fourth basic circuit component after resistors, capacitors, and inductors. It can "memorize" the passing charge after the power is turned off, and is used as a new type of nano-electronic synaptic device.
Based on nanometer-scale memristor, the computing-in-memory architecture is like a new working model of "working from home", which completely eliminates the energy consumption in commuting for data, and greatly enhance the operating speed, Yao Peng, the co-first author of the recently published paper.
"Such advantages could have broad application in future edge computing and cloud computing," Yao said.
In addition to lower latency and smaller energy consumption, the chip can effectively protect user privacy and data security, according to Yao.
Source: Global Times
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