When it comes to robots and various artificial programs to qualify as living beings, they fail because they can’t repair themselves like us. They need a human being to help them out to repair their machine parts. In order to tackle such type of situations, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has taken a move by preparing a computer chip that can heal its own information pathways.
This chip can heal itself when cracked because of the presence of liquid metal which restores conductivity. The whole process of bringing the circuit back to work after a crash, takes even less than a blink of an eye.
The basic component of a chip is a transistor and there are about 100,000 transistors in a chip which don’t function simultaneously. The researchers used laser to burn vast swaths of transistors out of the chip and then waited for the system to recalibrate. The chip can function as long as it can find alternate routes and the blast doesn’t reach any data caches in its crosshairs. In this whole process, application-specific integrated-circuit (ASIC) processor helps the system in knowing which pathways are broken so it can adjust accordingly.
In today’s world, the whole functioning of computers and cell phone stops when the chip burns out. Also, there is no surety of the data stored on it and you have to wait until the chip is replaced. The introduction of self-repairing chip will save countless hours and dollars in the field of technical support. Even the self-healing chips consume half as much power as compared to the non-healers.
This new concept of self-healing chip can be even compared to the functioning of human brain. In case of brain too, if one pathway is inaccessible, then it looks for the other ones. There is no doubt that these chips are an intriguing step in machine evolution but still they are not completely analogous to living beings. The Caltech microchips cannot regenerate over time unlike the biological tissues.
This type of immune system in integrated circuit-chips will surely open the way for new possibilities in the electronic world. It is truly a shift in the way the circuits will have the ability to operate independently. The circuits can now diagnose and fix their own problems without waiting for any help from human beings. It just seems like a miracle that the system crashes and heals itself now.
The use of self-repairing chips in tablets, smartphones and laptops will be a great advantage. They can be used to tackle with long-term aging problems which arise due to the changes in the internal properties of the system and the short-term variations which are caused by changes in the environmental conditions.
Not only this, these chips can be used to create longer lasting rechargeable batteries and will be a boon to the aeronautical industry too.
via Examiner National Edition Gadgets & Tech Channel Articles http://www.examiner.com/article/self-healing-electronic-chips-future-of-electronics?cid=roadrunner