Tuesday, July 12, 2011

DVD alloys help make computers that think like us - tech - 12 July 2011 - New Scientist

DVD alloys help make computers that think like us: GST is known as a "phase-change" alloy, because of its ability to change its molecular structure from a crystalline to a disordered amorphous "phase" when heated...
Different areas within a tiny spot of GST can be crystalline or amorphous to differing degrees, which means it can store information across a much wider range of values than simply 0 or 1...
Wright's neuron is able to mimic this threshold firing because GST's electrical resistance drops suddenly when it moves from its amorphous phase to the crystalline. So incoming signals in the form of pulses of current are applied to the artificial neuron - and it is deemed to have fired when its resistance plummets...
GST's ability to change its resistance has allowed them to program it to dynamically modify the strength of the nanoscale artificial synapses they have built...
a system with 10^10 synapses would consume just 10 watts...

No comments:

Post a Comment