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Technology: New Chips that Reduce Cost and Time for Computations 1000x
The technology that controls the dimmer of the light in your dining room may be the link to a new revolution in computers. Last month, a new type of computer chip was announced that is fundamentally different than today’s binary on-off style computers. The new technology may allow a new category of chips to perform calculations 1000 times faster than today’s chips.
The hype behind this new generation of chips claim dramatic speed improvements to perform calculations for complex tasks like detecting fraud and spam, mapping human genomes, and providing more effective advice and recommendation engines. The first of this type of chip is now becoming available, but the goals for the chip are relatively modest. The new chip from a company called Lyric is dedicated to improving the usability of Flash Memory. The new chip is said to have a form factor 30 times smaller than conventional chips to shrink flash memory. More generalized capabilities for this type of processor are expected to available in chips by 2013.
The new probability chips would attempt to force the pendulum that has swung towards digital to move a bit back toward analog. Lyric’s probability chips are not digital. They are based on a different type of physics and math than standard chips are today. Transistors are used in a much different way. Just a few transistors in the Lyric chip are able to do the job of 500 transistors in a conventional chip.
Lyric is funded with contracts from the Department of Defense’s DARPA and much of the technology originated from MIT. They have plans to create a co-processor that would be programmable and usable inside of servers and storage systems. The style of probability that the machine uses is called Bayesian analysis. The company is working on creating a programming language called PSBL (Probability Synthesis to Baysian Logic) that would enable probability equations to be much more easily expressed and presentable for computations. PSBL is to be released in a few months and will form the basis for the Lyric G5 probability chip.
