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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."

6 of 68 comments (clear)

  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. 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 webmistressrachel · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

      Yet.

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  3. 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...

  4. 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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