What steps can engineers take to enhance computer chips? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigated a new method for increasing the number of computer chip transistors. This study holds the potential for enhancing computer hardware for future applications, including artificial intelligence (AI) or other devices.
For the study, the researchers aimed to improve upon longstanding methods for building computer chips, which are often bulky and require additional materials to enable chips to be stacked. However, this latest research addresses these issues by incorporating a multilayered chip design that avoids traditional bulkiness and operates at decreased temperatures while ensuring stability. While also building upon longstanding designs, this latest study builds upon 2023 research conducted by this same team involving the development of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), which were hailed as enhancements to traditional, high-performance transistors.
“This breakthrough opens up enormous potential for the semiconductor industry, allowing chips to be stacked without traditional limitations,” said Dr. Jeehwan Kim, who is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and a co-author on the study. “This could lead to orders-of-magnitude improvements in computing power for applications in AI, logic, and memory.”
This study comes as AI applications continue to advance and expand, including healthcare, robotics, marketing, social media, machine learning, video games, and more. Therefore, if this new multilayered chip design proves both effective and efficient, this could enhance AI to new heights while contributing to societal improvement.
How will this multilayered chip design help advance computers in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Nature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EurekAlert!
