Indian American invents superfast microchip

Washington, Feb 11: This is a superfast microchip which is seven times faster but consumes 30 times less energy than the best technology of today. This microchip has been developed by an Indian-American scientist.

Krishna Palem, professor of Rice University invented the technology called PCMOS (probabilistic complementary metal-oxide semiconductor).

Palem is also director of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Institute for Sustainable Nanoelectronics (ISNE), Singapore.

"For consumers, it could mean the difference between charging a cell phone every few weeks instead of every few days. In addition to the encryption application that we have demonstrated..., it is equally well-suited for computer graphics," he said.

For example while streaming video application on a cell phone it is unnecessary to conduct precise calculations, Palem explained.

The small screen, combined with the human brain's ability to process less-than-perfect pictures, results in a case where the picture looks just as good with a calculation that is only approximately correct.

According to Rice University press release this is in contrast with today's silicon transistors becoming increasingly noisy as they get smaller, thus engineers have historically dealt with this by boosting the operating voltage to overpower the noise to ensure accurate calculations, leading to higher energy consumption levels.

OneIndia News (With inputs from Agencies)