Researchers from the California Institute of Technology have developed technology that allows electronic circuits repair themselves after damage. On the basis of sensors and regelektronica on the chip, and the desired output is the system itself a work-around.
At current chipontwerpen small defects on transistorniveau already lead to a whole chip unusable. Researchers of the High-Speed Integrated Circuits laboratory of the department of Engineering and Applied Science from Caltech have now developed a system in which the chips themselves, to a limited extent, able to repair and even optimize.
The system consists of several robust on-chip sensors, which provide information on temperature, current, voltage, and power consumption can pass it on to a special asic on the chip, which as it were acts as the brain of the self-recovering system. On the basis of the supplied sensor information and the desired output can be the asic on their own, a repair mechanism on the chip to activate. “We have the system as generic as possible, designed so that the optimum position of all actuators can determine, without external intervention,” said Stephen Bowers of the laboratory.
The Caltech researchers have their new technology is demonstrated on the basis of tiny, high-frequency signal amplifiers, with the developed ‘immune system’. The chips were in the experiments in various ways damaged, including the more than once exposed to a powerful laser.
Although more than half of the amplifier and a large number of components wiped out were the chip is able to recover. With the asic, operating at a clock speed of 50MHz took this recovery process, only 0.8 seconds, while this with 200MHz declined to 0.2 seconds.
Although exposure to a powerful laser in the practice, not quickly, it can self-healing ability of the proposed system can also be used for the repair of manufacturing defects for a lower failure rate. It was also found from tests with 20 different chips that the self-healing variant is more reliable. Finally, claim the researchers, the energy consumption of self-healing chips half may be lower than that of a conventional chipontwerp, already give the researchers no explanation.
