Merging memory and computation, programmable chip speeds AI, slashes power use

By shifting a fundamental property of computation, Princeton researchers have built a new type of computer chip that boosts the performance and slashes the energy demands of systems used for artificial intelligence. The chip, which works with standard programming languages, could be particularly useful on phones, watches or other devices that rely on high-performance computing and have limited battery life. The chip, based on a technique called in-memory computing, is designed to clear a primary computational bottleneck that forces computer processors to expend time and energy fetching data from stored memory. In-memory computing performs computation directly in the storage, allowing for greater speed and efficiency. The announcement of the new chip, along with a system to program it, follows closely on an earlier report that the researchers in collaboration with Analog Devices Inc. had fabricated circuitry for in-memory computing.