In a pathbreaking technological progress in the field of AI, a group of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has developed an analogous computing platform within a molecular film which is able to mimic human brain-like functioning, according a News Report in the Indian Express. The Bengaluru-based researchers working at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) at IISc said that the ‘brain on the chip’ design, even though it is analogous, could perform functions like processing and data storage which showed close resemblance to that of a human brain. And more importantly, it offers 16,500 conductance states within the molecular film. For comparison, the existing digital computing platform needs to be programmed and it operates on the binary states of 0 and 1. They can also be bulky on energy and time consumption, thus offering a reduced speed in comparison to the estimated AI-based calculation speeds with this platform.
This could revolutionise and shatter the glass ceiling of overall AI capabilities present today. The new platform, researchers said, offers flexibility and easy deployability of AI-Based tasks on to one’s personal electronic gadgets like smart phones, laptops and desktops. This would also significantly find use in computing applications, in Machine Learning and scientific computing, the IISc team on their work which addressed some of the pressing gaps in the present-day neuromorphic (following human brain-like computing techniques) operations. Unlike the energy-heavy operability in the digital platforms used for extensive computing purposes, use of molecular films permitted researchers to track free Ionic movements, which widened the memory pathways.
