Self-healing, self-monitoring chip

Self-healing, self-monitoring chip rearranges circuit if damaged

The standard PC consists of motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM, Power Supply and HDD. If one of the components brakes, the computer becomes useless and until you replace this component it will not function at all. But what if the computer could begin routing the broken parts tasks through the bits that are still functional? So far computer cannot do that but researchers have now managed to coax a microchip into doing so.

According to the Ali Hajimiri and a group of Caltech researchers have managed to create integrate circuit that, after taking severe damage, can reconfigure itself in such way where it can still remain functional. Now you probably think that this chip works something like T-1000 in Terminator 2. Unfortunately this chip doesn’t slowly melt back together, or generate new physical parts to patch up the broken area. However, it contains a secondary processor that jumps into action when parts of the chip become compromised. So the chip is damaged, but secondary processor uses a bit of quick thinking to figure out how the chip can still perform tasks. The chip also has the ability to tweak itself on the run, and can be programmed to focus more on saving energy or performance speed.

The test chip contains over 100,000 transistors, as well as various sensors in order to monitor the unit’s overall health. The team conducted test of the self-healing capabilities of the chip by blasting it with a laser, taking out around half of its transistor. It only took the microchip a couple of milliseconds to deal with the loss and to move one. One of the astonishing capabilities of this microchip which wasn’t blasted with laser beam is that he was able to reduce power consumption in half while increasing its efficiently.

This chip has the ability to monitor itself in order to provide best possible performance in general, but if some part do break down, the chip won’t be able to provide some kind of jury-rigged output. Using this ability the chip is able to tweak it and generate the best possible output with the remaining working bits. So the damaged chip will work properly and do the tasks the best it can. Hajimiri thinks that the technology behind self-healing circuit can be applied to any kind of circuit, as the secondary processor is tucked away safely underneath the main unit. If you want to learn more about self-healing chip please visit: Microchip Adapts to Svere Damage