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Scientists Turn Memory Chips Into Processors To Speed Up Computing Tasks (sciencedaily.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Daily: A team of international scientists have found a way to make memory chips perform computing tasks, which is traditionally done by computer processors like those made by Intel and Qualcomm. This means data could now be processed in the same spot where it is stored, leading to much faster and thinner mobile devices and computers. This new computing circuit was developed by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) in collaboration with Germany's RWTH Aachen University and Forschungszentrum Juelich, one of the largest interdisciplinary research centers in Europe. It is built using state-of-the-art memory chips known as Redox-based resistive switching random access memory (ReRAM). Developed by global chipmakers such as SanDisk and Panasonic, this type of chip is one of the fastest memory modules that will soon be available commercially. However, instead of storing information, NTU Assistant Professor Anupam Chattopadhyay in collaboration with Professor Rainer Waser from RWTH Aachen University and Dr Vikas Rana from Forschungszentrum Juelich showed how ReRAM can also be used to process data. This discovery was published recently in Scientific Reports. By making the memory chip perform computing tasks, space can be saved by eliminating the processor, leading to thinner, smaller and lighter electronics. The discovery could also lead to new design possibilities for consumer electronics and wearable technology.
like using truth tables in ROM as logic devices ?
Interesting to compare this to Micron's Automata processor, which is using standard DRAM for computations, taking advantage of massive parallelism for specialized tasks involving unstructured data. But this application is for a specialized RAM which probably has less general use. https://www.micronautomata.com...
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
You forgot one thing. Thin = fragile... catches fire or explodes because the battery needs to expand during usage
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Please don't confuse research papers with journalists' descriptions of research papers.
Here's the original paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
In it's conclussion, the paper clearly states "0, 1, 2".
Without the "3" that the journalist seems to have added out of his own ignorance for some inexplicable reason.
Popular science journalism more often than not badly fucks up perfectly reasonable research papers.
Remember that the people writing up these pieces are journalists, not experts or even trained in the fields they write about.
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Without the "3" that the journalist seems to have added out of his own ignorance for some inexplicable reason.
The more the memorrier!
Ezekiel 23:20
Unless I'm missing something, this won't result in "faster computing" but rather having more bandwidth for RAM.
Currently, all computer processors in the market are using the binary system, which is composed of two states – either 0 or 1. For example, the letter A will be processed and stored as 01000001, an 8-bit character.
However, the prototype ReRAM circuit built by Asst Prof Chattopadhyay and his collaborators processes data in four states instead of two. For example, it can store and process data as 0, 1, 2, or 3, known as Ternary number system.
Because ReRAM uses different electrical resistance to store information, it could be possible to store the data in an even higher number of states, hence speeding up computing tasks beyond current limitations.
If they wanted, they could already encode more data per bus line and put a translator by the RAM. However, literally none of this is talking about doing any computing using memory. It kinda seems like maybe a non-technical person wrote this press release.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
A memory chip is not a processor.
The *summary of* the article didn't say what the article did.
Nothing the summary says is close to what is true.
NO MEMORY UNIT WILL PERFORM CPU FUNCTIONS at less than 2 orders of magnitude worse (that's 1/100 performance/power) today.
There's no "discovery" here. You can use stones and sticks to compute. Using a memory chip is far more advanced. And just as stupid.
Slow day on slashdot?
Yes. I signed this post. Because I'm in the industry. I'm not a troll. I get to call out when people put out stupid articles where they summarize stupid research papers that have nothing to do with reality land. Like this one.
E
Both the summary and the article don't know what they are talking about. Reading these will only confuse you.
Read the paper here instead : http://www.nature.com/articles...
To summarize :
- ReRAM is a promising type of non-volatile memory.
- Earlier, it was discovered that ReRAM cells could be used to perform computations. This is not news.
- Multi-level ReRAM, which is able to store more than 2 states per cell exist. This is similar to MLC/TLC for flash memory. This is not news.
- The new thing is that with using 6-state cells, they managed to do calculations in base 3 directly. More generally, they said it would be possible to do base-n using 2n-state cells. This is good because higher bases means less cells are required for the same computation.
I'm inclined to say that many of the people writing up these pieces aren't really journalists, either.
Log in or piss off.
There are reasons CPU and RAM are separated. These are good reasons. The whole article is unmitigated nonsense, except for a very small set of special-purpose computations that can already be done with FPGAs anyways.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.