Chip is self-recovering when broken

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a chip that is capable of self-healing in just a few milliseconds after problems such as power failure or transistor failure.

Self-healing chip

This chip is just a coin, but inside it contains many sensors to monitor the voltage, power, current intensity, temperature. A special integrated circuit acting as a brain is also inserted into the chip and it will determine the fault based on the parameters mentioned above. When problems occur, 76 amplifiers will be combined with regulators to refine the system, thereby helping the chip remain operational.

Engineers do not program all of the situations for the IC, instead, it will analyze the data from the sensors and compare it with the sample data when running stably. If the metrics are higher or lower than expected, the IC itself knows how to command the system to adjust accordingly.

Caltech has performed a number of different scenarios to damage the chip, and they all recovered to continue their work. Even researchers use high power lasers to destroy multiple amplifiers but the chip still demonstrates its capabilities. In addition, engineers using the new generation of high-speed ICs show that self-healing can still be applied to modern systems.