Hardware

Researchers have developed a holographic data storage approach that stores and retrieves information in three dimensions by combining three properties of light—amplitude, phase and polarization. By allowing more data to be stored in the same space, the new approach could help advance efforts to meet the growing global demand for... Read more

As AI processing demands reach the limits of current CMOS technology, neuromorphic computing—hardware and software that mimic the human brain's structure—can help process information faster and more efficiently. A new memristor made from 2D layers of bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) combines long-term data retention and analog tuning to enhance AI energy... Read more

Thanks to the 5th generation (5G) technology, we now enjoy unprecedented levels of connectivity. Nevertheless, wireless data traffic is facing an increasing demand for an even higher capacity and faster data transfer—a demand that, according to Edholm's law, could exceed the terabit per second before 2035.... Read more

AI-generated images and videos pose a threat to democratic processes and undermine trust within society. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed chip technology that enables verification of the authenticity of sensor data including images or videos. Their study is published in the journal Nature Electronics.... Read more

Every second, scientific experiments produce a flood of data—so much that transmitting and analyzing it can slow down even the most advanced research. To help scientists better manage this data deluge, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed a new computer chip that rapidly... Read more

Researchers have developed a new kind of nanoelectronic device that could dramatically cut the energy consumed by artificial intelligence hardware by mimicking the human brain. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, developed a form of hafnium oxide that acts as a highly stable, low-energy "memristor"—a component designed to... Read more

A team of Korean researchers has developed the world's first technology that can freely connect and disconnect core computing resources such as memory and accelerators with "light" in next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) datacenters. Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced the development of a new optical switch based datacenter resource... Read more

A research team led by Lee Hyun Jun and Noh Hee Yeon from the Division of Nanotechnology at DGIST has succeeded in implementing the world's first two-terminal-based artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor that precisely controls hydrogen with electrical signals to enable self-learning and memory. The team's work appears in Advanced Science.... Read more

Edge computing is an emerging IT architecture that enables the processing of data locally by smartphones, autonomous vehicles, local servers, and other IoT devices instead of sending it to be processed at a centralized large data center. This approach could allow artificial intelligence (AI) models and other computational systems to... Read more

A team led by engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a new brain-inspired hardware platform that could help computer hardware keep pace with the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. By combining memory and computation on the same chip—and allowing its components to interact collectively like neurons... Read more

Australian researchers have built an ultra-compact artificial intelligence (AI) chip that is able to make calculations using the power of light, at the speed of light. The nano photonic chip prototype, which harnesses the power of light particles (photons) is built completely in-house at the Sydney Nano Hub at the... Read more

Most materials we use in everyday life expand slightly when heated and return to their original size when cooled. In addition to such thermal properties, materials can also have electrical properties or magnetic properties, and traditionally we have used these characteristics separately. However, some materials allow multiple properties to coexist... Read more

Around the world, scientists are exploring an unexpected solution to the growing data crisis: storing digital information in synthetic DNA. The idea is simple but powerful—DNA is one of the most compact, durable information systems on Earth. But one issue has held the field back. Once data is written into... Read more

A research team led by Professor Taesung Kim from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University has developed a technology that precisely controls the internal structure of semiconductors using heat, much like stamping out "bungeoppang" (fish-shaped pastry) in a mold. The team report that this approach improves the performance... Read more

A miniaturized radar chip, developed by researchers at Science Tokyo, advances Integrated Sensing and Communication for Beyond 5G and 6G systems. Measuring just 0.24 mm2 and consuming only 9.8 mW, the compact, low-power device generates high-speed, highly linear chirps by embedding linearization directly into the hardware, overcoming traditional speed-versus-accuracy limits... Read more

Over the past few decades, electronics engineers have been trying to develop new neuromorphic hardware, systems that mirror the organization of neurons in the human brain. These systems could run artificial intelligence (AI) models, particularly artificial neural networks (ANNs) more reliably and efficiently than existing devices.... Read more

Robots and self-driving cars could soon benefit from a new kind of brain-inspired hardware that can allegedly detect movement and react faster than a human. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications details how an international team built their neuromorphic temporal-attention hardware system to speed up automated driving... Read more

A new study has demonstrated how networks of spiking nanolasers could emulate a key principle of brain function: to imagine things that we cannot directly perceive by sampling from internal models of the world. The study, led by scientists from the University of Bern in collaboration with Thales Research &... Read more

Bees navigate their surroundings with astonishing precision. Their brains are now inspiring the design of tiny, low-power chips that could one day guide miniature robots and sensors.... Read more

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as the models underpinning the functioning of ChatGPT and various other online platforms, has grown exponentially over the past few years. Current hardware and electronic devices, however, might not be best suited for running these systems, which are computationally intensive and can... Read more

The ubiquity of smart devices—not just phones and watches, but lights, refrigerators, doorbells and more, all constantly recording and transmitting data—is creating massive volumes of digital information that drain energy and slow data transmission speeds. With the rising use of artificial intelligence in industries ranging from health care and finance... Read more

A new chip aims to dramatically reduce energy consumption while accelerating the processing of large amounts of data.... Read more

In a Nature Communications study, researchers from China have developed an error-aware probabilistic update (EaPU) method that aligns memristor hardware's noisy updates with neural network training, slashing energy use by nearly six orders of magnitude versus GPUs while boosting accuracy on vision tasks. The study validates EaPU on 180 nm... Read more

Optical computing has emerged as a powerful approach for high-speed and energy-efficient information processing. Diffractive optical networks, in particular, enable large-scale parallel computation through the use of passive structured phase masks and the propagation of light. However, one major challenge remains: systems trained in model-based simulations often fail to perform... Read more

Until now, AI services based on large language models (LLMs) have mostly relied on expensive data center GPUs. This has resulted in high operational costs and created a significant barrier to entry for utilizing AI technology. A research team at KAIST has developed a technology that reduces reliance on expensive... Read more

An ultrathin ferroelectric capacitor, designed by researchers from Japan, demonstrates strong electric polarization despite being just 30 nm thick including top and bottom electrodes—making it suitable for high-density electronics. Using a scandium-doped aluminum nitride film as the ferroelectric layer, the team achieved high remanent polarization even at reduced thicknesses. This... Read more

Scientists in China have unveiled a new AI chip called LightGen that is 100 times faster and 100 times more energy efficient than NVIDIA chips, the leading supplier of AI chips worldwide. Instead of using electricity to move information, this new optical chip relies on light to perform complex generative... Read more

A cross-institutional team led by researchers from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE), under the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), have achieved a major breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware by developing a new type of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that... Read more

A collaborative team has achieved the first monolithic 3D chip built in a U.S. foundry, delivering the densest 3D chip wiring and order-of-magnitude speed gains.... Read more

MIT researchers have developed a new fabrication method that could enable the production of more energy efficient electronics by stacking multiple functional components on top of one existing circuit.... Read more

Artificial intelligence and machine learning could become dramatically more efficient, thanks to a new type of computer component developed by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Tohoku University, in collaboration with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).... Read more

Holding a conversation in a crowded room often leads to the frustrating "cocktail party problem," or the challenge of separating the voices of conversation partners from a hubbub. It's a mentally taxing situation that can be exacerbated by hearing impairment.... Read more

The expansion of data centers to power the AI boom has more people wondering: what exactly is in a data center?... Read more

Developing chips that simulate how the brain works has great promise for AI, robotics, and other fields. But making them so that they're scalable while providing repeatable results has proven tricky. Now, a Yale-led team of researchers has put forth a solution. The results are published in Nature Communications.... Read more

Addressing the staggering power and energy demands of artificial intelligence, engineers at the University of Houston have developed a revolutionary new thin-film material that promises to make AI devices significantly faster while dramatically cutting energy consumption.... Read more

Amazon Web Services launched its in-house-built Trainium3 AI chip on Tuesday, marking a significant push to compete with Nvidia in the lucrative market for artificial intelligence computing power.... Read more

The Mexican government will build a supercomputer with a processing capacity seven times greater than the current most powerful computer in Latin America, officials responsible for the project said Wednesday.... Read more

Recent research from a University of Adelaide academic has outlined the gap between scientific reality and whether a promising technology reaches commercial production. Adjunct Lecturer Dr. Dominic Lane, School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, has been exploring the world of ULTRARAM, a widely promoted III–V semiconductor memory concept claimed to... Read more

In a breakthrough in radar technology, researchers from the City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) have developed the world's first integrated photonic millimeter-wave radar chip, achieving unprecedented precision in a remarkably compact device. This breakthrough represents a significant step forward in the development of Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) networks,... Read more

A team led by the BRAINS Center for Brain-Inspired Computing at the University of Twente has demonstrated a new way to make electronic materials adapt in a manner comparable to machine learning. Their study, published in Nature Communications, introduces a method for physical learning that does not require software algorithms... Read more

As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and widespread, so does the environmental cost of running it. Behind every chatbot, image generator, and television streaming recommendation are massive banks of millions of computers housed in an increasing number of data centers that consume staggering amounts of electricity and water to keep... Read more

The ability to analyze the brain's neural connectivity is emerging as a key foundation for brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies, such as controlling artificial limbs and enhancing human intelligence. To make these analyses more precise, it is critical to quickly and accurately interpret the complex signals from many neurons in the... Read more

A new mega data center is slated to rise in a rural stretch of eastern Germany in what backers hope is a starting point for a European AI sector that can compete with the United States and China.... Read more

Robots that can sense and respond to the world like humans may soon be a reality as scientists have created an artificial neuron capable of mimicking different parts of the brain.... Read more

A research team led by Professor Sanghyeon Choi from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at DGIST has successfully developed a memristor, which is gaining recognition as a next-generation semiconductor device, through mass-integration at the wafer scale.... Read more

Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have fabricated ultra-thin memtransistor arrays from two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) with controllable Schottky barriers. These arrays are highly uniform, demonstrating low device-to-device variation and provide high performance for image recognition tasks.... Read more

Analog computers are systems that perform computations by manipulating physical quantities such as electrical current, that map math variables, instead of representing information using abstraction with discrete binary values (i.e., 0 or 1), like digital computers.... Read more

Could computers ever learn more like humans do, without relying on artificial intelligence (AI) systems that must undergo extremely expensive training?... Read more

To make accurate predictions and reliably complete desired tasks, most artificial intelligence (AI) systems need to rapidly analyze large amounts of data. This currently entails the transfer of data between processing and memory units, which are separate in existing electronic devices.... Read more

Many modern artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as surgical robotics and real-time financial trading, depend on the ability to quickly extract key features from streams of raw data. This process is currently bottlenecked by traditional digital processors. The physical limits of conventional electronics prevent the reduction in latency and the... Read more