IBM Announces Chip Morphing Technology

An anonymous reader writes "IBM has announced that it is now capable of producing self-healing chips. From the article: 'eFUSE works by combining software algorithms and microscopic electrical fuses, opposed to laser fuses, to produce chips that can regulate and adapt their own actions in response to changing conditions and system demands.' It goes on to say that the IBM system is more robust than previous methods, and that the chips are already in production. The future is here!"

Comments

Obiligatory 2001 Quote...

[rob.sharp]

"I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."

Re:Obiligatory 2001 Quote...

[Pharmboy]

How applicable. Nothing beats a technology that brings up images of either "2001" or "The Matrix". (insert eFuse Overlord joke here)

But on a more serious note, while this sounds pretty cool, it still breaks down to this: If a portion of the chip is screwed up, eFuse will bypass it. If you bypass part of the chip, you will have lower performance. I can see where this would be good in enterprise computing *IF* the chip also *TELLS* you that it is messed up, so if a portion of the chip becomes defective, it will still operate until it can be replaced. This would be great for uptimes and in mission critical systems, but for overclocking desktop system, this seems pretty useless, here is why:

Take a 2ghz chip. Overclock to 2.5ghz. Blow two eFuses (oops). Now chip at 2.5ghz functions as fast as a 2ghz chip. Clock back down, and it performs as fast as a 1.5ghz chip. Sell chip or system on eBay to someone without telling them eFuses are blown, screwing them over.

Unless there is a way to test if the eFuses are blown, I can see some real problems on the used market for this kind of chip. This would also apply to "why is this server performing like crap?" situations. Of course, as long as the eFuses are not blown, but are instead just reordering its own logic for specific uses (web server only, database server, etc), this would be majorly kick ass offering a quazi-specific purpose system on the fly. Especially once you have a kernel module that can talk to it and tell it what kinds of changes in routing would be best for a given platform, telling it "this computer is used for $x only, route logic accordingly".

wish it were more descriptive

[tklive]

while it does sound like a big step forward ,esp considering "eFUSE is technology independent, does not require introduction of new materials, tools or processes" . But how exactly is it selfhealing ?

nothing is mentioned abt the redundancy required for the reroutings... its obvious not all kinds of faults can be handled this way. so, do they try to predict possible faults and build in workarounds.. or do they just use the natural design to handle whatever can be ? ....how does this affect the way they design circuits ... make more generic blocks etc ?..and maybe i didnt really understand the article...but isnt it more of a self correcting rather than self healing feature?

wish the article had more info...

Re:Overclocking made safer.

[dnoyeb]

Heal, lol. What did I miss? A fuse is something that interrupts a circuit permanently. Akin to gnawing off a leg.

Reading their article, the big improvement is the leg has no chance to grow back.

Sounds like total spin to claim that descruction of circuits is a healing process. I smell DRM all over this.

Re:Basis for PowerTune?

[rale, the]

No, its not. Theres a pretty huge difference between changing logic and simply lowering frequency by a range of dividers.

With a limit?

[usefool]

Surely a chip cannot keep self-healing indefinitely can't it?

If it's capable of re-routing certain path when something went wrong, it'll eventually run out of alternative path, or the performance will be degraded to next to useless.

However it's certainly a good pre-emptive tool for mission critical machines, provided it has a way of informing the admin that it's dying, rather than secretly degrading.

Default Color Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Before that other guy does it:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/30/220256 &tid=136&tid=137&tid=126

Article lacking detail... but...

[3seas]

What this sounds like is a chip production success/failure rate improvement. As well as providing a bit more flexability in going from teh drawing board (design/theory) to production (testing/reality).

I think it is very interesting that they are using something that was considered to be bad in chip reality (electromigration), as a positive thing.

This is, in analogy, like how our bodies exist symboticly with many different germs and such, for without we'd die alot sooner.

I don't think what the article is talking about is anything like reprogrammable chips (FPGAs) as some may think by reading the article, but rather something automatically used once between the chip production line and its actual ongoing system use to auto test and correct any production anomolies per chip. (is this where we say bye bye Neo?)

Re:Overclocking made safer.

[vrmlknight]

You can do that once... The main thing this helps is when there is a single failure in a production server so now when it happens you are able to schedule down time and then replace that component. Is like when you have your redundant hard drives one goes then you can replace it when you get a chance. (hopefully soon before you have another failure)

Potentially disastrous for desktop CPU's

[wamatt]

Lets hope IBM has the for-sight to ensure that the eFuse feature cannot be controlled by software.

Think about the latest worm going around taking your nice new 3200Mhz processor to an effective 100mhz by blowing all the fuses and crippling it.

I would guess though, because of the high R&D costs involved, this will only ever see its way into high-end servers.

Who benefits really?

[hashwolf]

When batches of silicon chips are made a number of them are always defective.

This technology is more beneficial for IBM than for us because it will allow IBM to SELL defective-but-self-repairable chips instead of SCRAPPING them. Because of this, it is highly probable that there will be no way end users will be able to garner info about to what extent the chip has already repaired itself.

If this is the case IBM will probably take one of the following roads:
1) Continue with the current manufacturing standards - this would yield chips with more longevity.
2) Manufacture chips with less stringent (and hence cheaper) manufacturing standards - although this would yield more defective chips, these won't be thrown away since they can self repair; they will be sold instead!

I really hope it's not option #2 they chose.

Download an MP3, Blow Up your CPU?

[iansmith]

The first thought that entered my head when I read this was, "Great... now we can have hardware that can be designed to self-destruct on demand." Imagine you get sold a CPU with an expiry date... software licences for hardware, the old you don't own the chip but are just renting it.

IBM better be REAL carefull with this too. If it's possible to fool the chip into blowing these fuses, a virus could potentially damage millions of computers in a day of spreading.

As others mentioned, it is a neat trick, but a solution in search of a problem. CPU's just don't fail all that often to need something like this.

Wait for the exploits

[mangu]

So, will we see a day when your computer catches a virus that transforms that gazillion GHz CPU into a 2 MHz 6502?