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Engineers Build "Self-Healing" Chips Capable of Repairing Themselves

Posted by samzenpus on from the electronics-heal-thyself dept.

hypnosec writes "A Team of researchers and engineers at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has developed 'self-healing' chips (PDF) that can heal themselves within a few microseconds. The team tested their work by damaging amplifiers in several places using high-powered lasers. In less than a second the chips were able to develop work-arounds thereby healing themselves."

68 comments

  1. More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Looker_Device · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not to be too pedantic about it, but I'm very touchy about biological metaphors being inappropriately applied to technology (lets we forget how amazingly complex evolved biology really is compared to even our most advanced tech). FTFA, it sounds like they don't really "heal," they just reroute around the damage. But the damage is still there. It's more analogous to network packets being rerouted around a bad server than a biological entity actually replacing damaged cells.

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    1. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by sensationull · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Thank you, that was what I was about to say, massively redundant, cool but it does not actually repair itself back to the way it was before, as it 'heals' it uses up that ability.

    2. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by N!k0N · · Score: 2

      Evolution's had a damn long time to get the "rebuilding cells" part down -- we're just at the "stop the bleeding" phase with the chips. Once they can rebuild their structure, we're in for trouble...

    3. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Threni · · Score: 1

      > they don't really "heal," they just reroute around the damage

      But it says it in the title! Twice! They are 'self healing' AND they repair themselves! It leaves no doubt!

    4. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In a mission critical situation, lets say in space or medicine then you would want something like that, wouldn't you?

    5. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Does that make the broken-and-disconnected circuits scar tissue?

    6. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Evolution's had a damn long time to get the "rebuilding cells" part down -- we're just at the "stop the bleeding" phase with the chips.

      Once they can rebuild their structure, we're in for trouble...

      If I caught that hint correctly, what you're saying is we still haven't learned a damn thing from Cyberdyne Systems, and we actually want this tech.

      Then again, why am I even worried. Religion will destroy us long before a model 101 will get the chance.

    7. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree, rather than "self-healing" it would be "self repairing". You don't heal a machine, you repair it. methinks there's way too much anthropomorphising these days.

      If I hit it with a hammer, how well will it "heal"?

    8. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by N!k0N · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's what it sounds like, the chips "heal" in the same way that networks "heal" -- route around the slow/bad/dead parts -- rather than biological healing of replacing the dead/missing cells. I'm taking this to be the first steps towards artificial healing -- the chips (or networks for that matter) can close off the parts that are "bleeding" due to damage.

      So, for now the chips are able to put up a rudimentary scab. Eventually, they may be able to take "local" resources (silicon, carbon, whatever) and start rebuilding the patterns that were on them. I just hope the re-structuring there ends up with a "#5 is alive!" machine, rather than a T-1000.

    9. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by rioki · · Score: 1

      But that is a well understood problem on a macroscopic scale. The only thing they did war bring down the redundancy onto the chip. I don't think that it is that useful once a micrometeorite obliterates the entire chip.

    10. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      Usefulness for a purpose has disconnected but relevant bearing on how it works. Operational details specify what problems the technology can solve; there is overlap for bare function, but the details are important. In this case you could have a chip with an inherent structure that would self-regrow when current is applied if damage is not extensive and materials were present (i.e. cracks self-heal infinitely, uses electricity); or a blue-goo type chip that contains a reservoir of consumable raw material to accomplish same purpose (consumes goo and electricity); or redundant schematics back-ups and FPGA (limited surface area to damage; potential routing problems); or redundant schematics with blue-goo (same, different implementation, in practice one will have an advantage of weight and effectiveness over the other but basic concerns are identical); or a simply redundant chip (prone to manufacturing deviations reducing its effectiveness; certain failures may be fatal; you need 100% additional capacity plus routing for each 100% redundancy; redundancy is per redundant component--100% blue-goo could repair the same 1% of surface through 100 failures, but 100% pure redundancy can recover from the same 1% surface failure 1 time).

      This is not really "self-healing" but "redundant". Of the three above, you have these considerations:

      Stable reflowing crystal: Can't heal from large damage; small damage (microcracks, minor fissures, electrical/mechanical stress) should heal. Chip normal lifecycle is extended indefinitely.

      Blue-goo self-repair: Can heal from larger damage for a limited supply. Works off total damage: Eventual cumulative loss over 100% of chip area with 100% repair capacity will repair itself. Beyond capacity, repairs cease. Most likely, blue-goo would have transport issues into very tiny micro-fissures and cracks--cracks embedded deep inside substrate are not physically reachable and won't repair, yet may affect electrical properties of the substrate and thus impact chip performance.

      Redundancy: Absolute healing from any type of failure. Redundancy takes up additional space for each redundant copy of each component: if you have 2 redundant copies of an ALU, you need space for 3 ALU total. If you lose one or two, it's functional. If you have one redundant copy of every component (100% coverage) and you lose two of any one, you lose the whole package at what may be 10% or 1% or more or less utilization. Contrast with blue-goo, where 10% loss means 10% loss of capacity to self-heal. Likely a high-stress area will require more specific redundancy; and bad luck could render a chip useless even with all that unutilized self-repair (redundant) capacity.

      The holy grail would be a stable reflowing crystal with blue-goo that can repair the crystal. Tiny cracks would self-heal, while larger damage would trigger self-repair. Redundancy is worthless: if you have 3 ALU, you should be parallel processing instead of idling 2 of them for fail-over. Redundancy only seems desirable because we don't have a better method like blue-goo or stable reflowing crystal.

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    11. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by drkim · · Score: 1

      Thank you, that was what I was about to say, massively redundant, cool but it does not actually repair itself back to the way it was before, as it 'heals' it uses up that ability.

      Not even new.

      They have been building self-testing, redundant chips for years.

      Here's a paper from 1982:
      http://www.computer.org/csdl/trans/tc/1982/07/01676058.pdf
      1988:
      http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=3187

      etc...

    12. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      But it says it in the title! Twice!

      But that sounded better.

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    13. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      You don't heal a machine, you repair it. methinks there's way too much anthropomorphising these days.

      Yes, and it needs to stop because the language hates that.

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    14. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by ikaruga · · Score: 1

      +1 if I had mod points. That was exactly my suspicion when I saw this news at other tech blogs. Reading the article a couple of days ago when I heard the news on Engadget, I was incredibly disappointed. The word "regeneration" is being completely misused here, unless that is it's meaning in Electronics(Just like "Teleportation" through quantum entanglement is quite different from Teleportation as we usually imagine). However as a System/Medical engineer that deals a lot of electronics I've never heard of such terminology. That is just a IC with some redundant reprogrammable capabilities that reprograms itself based on the input from the damage sensors it has built in itself. Nothing really goes back to the previous undamaged state. And after a number trials it will die for good. Useful tech, but misleading title.
      Also horrible abstract. Just specs and numbers, exactly the opposite we expect from an abstract.

    15. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by jones_supa · · Score: 2

      Not to be too pedantic about it, but I'm very touchy about biological metaphors being inappropriately applied to technology (lets we forget how amazingly complex evolved biology really is compared to even our most advanced tech). FTFA, it sounds like they don't really "heal," they just reroute around the damage.

      Some of the biological processes also route around the damage, the brain being a good example.

    16. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It seems dumb to me to have unused functional units lying around. But if a chip could detect that a functional unit has failed (by cross-testing?) and then degrade performance by not using it, while continuing to operate so that I can at least get useful fault information, that would be a massive win.

      --
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    17. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends upon the severity, considering it's only been about 10 years since we realized that neurogenesis is real, I'd say that it's more likely the case that minor damage does get repaired, it's just that we don't normally notice it.

    18. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3/4th is actually fairly impressive. I doubt racism and sexism could get you over 1/2.

    19. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the same behavior seen in neurons, when a section of the brain is damaged. Replacing a cell would be analogous to having self replicating nano-machines inside the chip.

    20. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The word "ecosystem" is consultant-speak for "I'm full of shit"

      I'm a limnologist, you clod.

    21. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by TheEffigy · · Score: 1

      Not to be too pedantic about it, but I'm very touchy about biological metaphors being inappropriately applied to technology (lets we forget how amazingly complex evolved biology really is compared to even our most advanced tech). FTFA, it sounds like they don't really "heal," they just reroute around the damage. But the damage is still there. It's more analogous to network packets being rerouted around a bad server than a biological entity actually replacing damaged cells.

      The brain is known to reroute signals in order to restore lost functionality in stroke victims, so (without having read TFA) I would group this under healing.

    22. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you. I thought that I had seen this before(years ago), but couldn't quite recall where(and no your citations aren't the ones that I was thinking of either), so once again /. for the trendily titled "research" that has pretty well been accomplished before, but that pretty much sums up today's research anyways... no real breakthroughs, just evolution of prior research which for some reason ends up being bandied about like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread or something.

    23. Re:More accurate to say "More resilient chips"? by drkim · · Score: 1

      Thank you. I thought that I had seen this before(years ago), but couldn't quite recall where

      To be honest, I was impressed with the first redundant chips (decades ago.)

      Obviously, someone very bright said, "We're stamping these circuits on the die; let's put in a self-test, and just stamp a whole bunch." Even the Apollo missions back in the "60s had redundant CPUs (albeit not single chips) that would 'vote' on decisions, and vote out the odd man.

      I just can't figure out why this is 'news'...
      Ah /.

  2. I for one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Oh never mind, it's just getting too easy nowadays.

    1. Re:I for one... by webmistressrachel · · Score: 0

      How ironic that despite you and I noticing how redundant that meme is getting on here, the "First Post" (below yours right now) quotes what you were _going_ to say, precisely!

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    2. Re:I for one... by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Or maybe it was the same AC who just couldn't resist the urge. ;)

  3. First post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I for one welcome our self-healing overlords

  4. "A Team" by Alopex · · Score: 1

    "If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team."

  5. That BS again.... by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They are NOT "self-healing". That would mean they can get back to their original state after damage. What these things have is a high level of redundancy. But whenever they suffer damage, the redundancy gets less and eventually they fail. Calling this "self-healing" is a direct lie.

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    1. Re:That BS again.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A dead transistor is a dead transistor. You can't repair the building blocks in electronics.

    2. Re:That BS again.... by webmistressrachel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      | You can't repair the building blocks in electronics.

      Yet.

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    3. Re:That BS again.... by ledow · · Score: 2

      Agreed.

      But still has interesting implications for, say, radiation-hardened hardware like space-travel. Of course, it's nothing they don't already have in terms of the overall process, but having it on-chip is yet-another factor that has to experience corruption before you need to replace the hardware.

      Another nice step, but nothing miraculous.

    4. Re:That BS again.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "healing" even with respect to biological machines does not imply reverting to original state. a cut still leaves a scab. It simply refers to a restoration of function, often, but not always, to a lesser state.

    5. Re:That BS again.... by illestov · · Score: 1

      I personally don't see a problem with calling a chip "self healing" if its capable of regaining its functionality through some sort of automated process. If you guys are going to be picky, then even in nature nothing is REALLY self healing. When a cell in your body gets damaged, it is not "repaired" but is replaced by another cell that performs the same function. When you cut your skin, you replace damaged cells with new ones and form a scar.

    6. Re:That BS again.... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      The thing is that "healing" grows something new to replace what was damaged. This thing does not do that and all the spares have the same risk of getting damaged.

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    7. Re:That BS again.... by illestov · · Score: 1
      I would have to disagree with your definition..

      heal (hl)

      v. healed, healing, heals v.tr. 1. To restore to health or soundness; cure. 2. To set right; repair: healed the rift between us. 3. To restore (a person) to spiritual wholeness.

      there is nothing in the definition that implies the process by which it heals. I think you are missing a much more interesting implication of that article which is that an IC that can diagnose itself and then switch to an appropriate "spare" or re-route itself is pretty amazing and can lead to a whole new family of micro electronics that is extremely reliable and perhaps eventually to .. Borg. ;-)

    8. Re:That BS again.... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      However the definition implies restoration/repair of the defect. The thing from the OP just plugs in a spare and leaves the original broken. The only difference to component replacement is that the spare is already on the chip, and hence there is a hard limit on how often it can be done.

      I also do not overlook the approach: It is pretty old, and there are reports of it from time to time. This is, at best, incremental research. Things like master-checker pairs of CPUs with some fail-over mechanism are well-known, but only in a limited community, as they are expensive.

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    9. Re:That BS again.... by illestov · · Score: 1

      haha ok you win. you sure know how to take excitement out of progress ;-)

    10. Re:That BS again.... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Well, excitement is nice when there actually is something to get excited about. It it is just marketing BS blowing things out of proportion, I like to try to be the voice of reason. Sorry about that ;-)

      --
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  6. Will these heal up? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... That's good. Because if you can't pass for human, you won't be much good to us.

  7. Rerouting power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    We all know what this will lead to....

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQnwmEkEito

  8. What a waste of time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't these fools realize we'll all be able to 3D print our own chips at home soon? Any time now.

    1. Re:What a waste of time by webmistressrachel · · Score: 1

      Seriously, [Citation Needed].

      This is one of the few occasions where the meme is actually the most logical response. Unless, of course, my sarcasm detector is malfunctioning again.

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    2. Re:What a waste of time by ACE209 · · Score: 1

      Unless, of course, my sarcasm detector is malfunctioning again.

      Don't worry, you can 3D print a new one soon.

      --
      "we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
  9. Re:another non-story by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Man, it makes me sick that people haven't taken the obvious step of giving the intricate metal layers and zones of dopant concentration on a silicon wafer the same modularity as 3.5 inch HDDs with hot-swap connectors... Scientists are so lazy.

    Heck, why do we get worked up about integrated circuits at all? I saw Bell Labs demonstrate the same concept with discrete transistors before 1950, and they were basically just ripping off vacuum tubes...

  10. Real Genius? by luke923 · · Score: 2

    After reading CalTech and high-powered lasers, I could only think of a ragtag team of students like Mitch Taylor, Chris Knight, and Lazlo Hollyfeld implanting a two-way transceiver into Kent's dental work in order to thwart Hathaway's plans to embezzle funds from the DoD.

    --
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  11. Re:another non-story by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 4, Funny

    RAID is only 15 years old? It came about in like 1998?

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  12. Re:another non-story by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

    Maybe 25 years ago that would have been interesting by 1998 RAID was well known. There would be no pause in availability at all.

  13. Sinclair? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Didn't Sir Clive do this with memory back in the 80s?

  14. Can you say? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nimrod? hehe

  15. 1 megabit RAM chip, 1980's by michaelmalak · · Score: 0

    My recollection is that back in the 1980's, chip manufacturers could not figure out how to make a 1-megabit RAM chip (that's 128KB, or a millionth the RAM of a server today) with no bad bits, so they added extra rows and the first time (?) it was utilized it would figure out which rows worked. For some reason, I recall that AT&T got a patent on it.

  16. Can you say? by buggsdummy2025 · · Score: 1

    Nimrod !!!

  17. Re:another non-story by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    So now a chip with built in redundancy can bypass damage, but without allowing for the bad section to be replaced. FAIL.

    Fail? There's again some typical /. thinking: an invention can't be useful if it's not perfect in all ways, thus it's a complete fail.

    This is still an invention that can add a nice amount of robustness to mission-critical chips.

  18. Obviously engineers don't watch movies by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 1

    Maybe watching the Terminator and Matrix movies might stop this kind of scientific "discovery".

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    1. Re:Obviously engineers don't watch movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or Stargate SG1, remember those replicators?

  19. Re:another non-story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Very much like a new chip that can replicate itself into a completely separate functional chip is not impressive because unix has the 'cp' command for years.

  20. Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't stand all the chip crumbs in the bottom of the bag. Self-healing chips to the rescue!

  21. Re:another non-story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Um WTF are you talking about? Nothing you said makes any sense.

  22. Ohhhh , , , by Kimomaru · · Score: 1

    Thank god. I was worried we'd never get around to building Skynet.

  23. Terminator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Okay, just be careful about how sophisticated you make electronics and robotics. I've seen so many great breakthroughs lately. Robots can walk in a human-link manner and prevent themselves from falling while hurling extremely heavy blocks. Now, you can give them electronics that heal themselves? This is all fine as long as you don't give the thing real intelligence. I know researchers are working on that too. You put it all together and we will have real live Terminators on our hands.

    Just be careful people....careful about the whole "human extinction" thing :)

  24. Re:another non-story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's making fun of the OP suggesting this development is a 'non-story' because some old feature written in software using off the shelf products already existed and therefore should be obvious and trivial to add to complex integrated circuitry. Software bits are easy to copy and recover, therefore transistors and connections should be trivial to copy and restore too!

  25. Everything Old is .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Remember hearing about this concept a long time ago as a technique for spacecraft.

    http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch5-5.html

  26. Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder why this is considered news. Routing around errors in many-core chips exists for some time now, and the only problem with doing it more is the cost of specialized hardware. Calling it "healing" is yet another publicity stint, and this sort of thing should not be rewarded.

  27. OH THANK GOD! its about time by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    My chips are always being damaged in specific places using high-powered lasers, and not the whole thing going up in a puff of smoke and small explosion if there is enough current.