Electronic chip with the tip of a finger but contains 10,000 artificial brains

With this technology, artificial intelligence will be stored in a smaller space but much smarter.

MIT engineers have designed an electronic chip made of copper and silver , smaller than a piece of paper but containing 10,000 artificial brains. Tens of thousands of these nervous systems are connected by miniature silicon wires, exactly the same way the human brain works to process and transmit information.

Every little dot in the chip is a lot of artificial brains, they connect to each other, creating great power. (Photo: Peng Lin / MIT News).

In a study published in Nature Nanotechnology, the team presented its new product that not only simulates how the brain works, but also shrinks it down to the size of a fingertip, as well as using Type of compound for fast transmission.

In addition to remembering and storing information and images at higher quality than other previous-generation chips, electronic chips can also perform a number of intuitive tasks and are not obstructed by materials. Helps operate smoothly and most sensitive.

The test chip captures the image of a building, showing its sharpness and ability to store information. (Photo: Jennifer Chu / MIT News).

Associate Professor Jeehwan Kim of mechanical engineering at MIT said: 'So far, artificial neural systems have only been designed on computer software, we want to turn it into an external physical product. , helps integrate into machines that need thinking like humans. '

Combining tens of thousands of processors into one small, usable device. Mr. Kim cited, for example, that a chip is attached to a car's dashcam, which will observe and make its own decision to autopilot without an internet connection.

'The potential of this product is that it is fast and in place, able to solve many immediate problems without having to spend time connecting to the server to use common resources , ' he said.

The wandering ion plays a brain cell

Memristor or semiconductor memory is an essential detail, present in every artificial nervous system. They act as synapses in the brain, receiving signals from the noron and send to the next noron. In the machine system, information is sent as an ion, so the conductivity of the memristor plays an important role.

A typical semiconductor device only sends and receives information in the form of 0 and 1 via electric current, very simply resulting in not much information transmission. The memristor, meanwhile, presents information in a more complex, thicker density, and simulates the true brain synapses.

Photo a: The chip is viewed from the outside. Pictures b, c: When zoomed in many times and see the very small memristor is closely linked together. Photo d: Comparison of image retention between materials, showing that copper-silver alloys help store data for up to 60 seconds without being faded.

In addition to helping information flow, the memristors also record and remember the intensity of the current, thereby automatically adjusting the amount of information for the corresponding current of the next time. This helps the information to be sent continuously without any interruption from outside factors.

And the last important thing that the team wants to do is that the memristors with good storage and transmission capacity, helping a small chip has the power of a supercomputer, can solve many problems. Great deals on the spot without internet connection.

Super materials for creating artificial brain

Designing a memristor is difficult because the rate of conductivity and the flow of information are inversely proportional to each other. When information is transmitted, the ions will move along the interconnected system but also quickly disintegrate into the surrounding environment.

Therefore, if a wire has a high conductivity, the ion dissolves quickly and vice versa. Recognizing this problem, Assoc. Prof. Kim and his team turned to metallurgical techniques to create a mixture between many metals.

Artificial brain helps computers solve problems like humans, but faster and more accurately.

'Medieval metallurgists used to increase or decrease the ratio of the input metal to create a mechanical device with superior properties. Inspired by that, we also adjusted the molecular level to create a superconducting wire, helping artificial memory to transmit signals extremely quickly, '' Mr. Kim said.

But unlike weaponry metallurgy, the team tuned deeper into the molecule, affecting their electrodes to create an environment that kept the electricity free of ions. After much testing, Mr. Kim's team chose copper alloy because it can bond with silver and silicon.

After creating the material, the researchers placed electrodes around and created miniature chips with the power equivalent to 10,000 brains. Each pixel in the chip corresponds to a memristor, they are close by and interact very well with each other.

Not only working inside computers, artificial brains are being brought to the outside world by scientists to put into machines, such as self-driving cars, autonomous robots.

Mr. Kim's team started running many tests to assess its transmission and memory capabilities. The results are very surprising, it remembers images with high resolution and provides accurate analysis. The design of the group has created the best memristor.

This technology is being perfected because it has undergone an impressive test evaluation process. Kim said that when applied in practice, the chip will perform many tasks related to memorizing and processing information, helping to solve the problem of a massive supercomputer or a network connection. just did it.