Wednesday 13 March 2013
The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is working on a “self-healing” computer chip.
Yes as you may have seen on that futuristic movie where robots control earth and the mainframe defend and heal it self againts the human revolution....
But enough nerd paranoia...
The Caltech team has built a power amplifier that can detect its own problems and look for workarounds if something fails,
like if there is insufficient power to keep the computer running.
The team tested how resilient
a group of 76 self-healing chips are by “zapping them with high-power lasers.
While this power amplifier is by no means an organic being that can actually grow damaged parts, it is smart enough to troubleshoot itself and come up with its own solutions
without interference from researchers, they have equipped the chips with sensors that monitor everything from temperature to voltage, but leave its on-board
“brain” to “make decision based on the data fed to it by the sensors” so the chip can make repairs immediately.
