Imagine if hardware could be upgraded with new features as easily as software.
Making chips like Lego bricks!
Researchers at MIT have designed a modular chip that uses flashes of light to transmit information between components. One of the design goals of the chip is to allow people to swap in new or improved functionality instead of replacing the entire chip, essentially paving the way for devices that can always be upgraded.
“The general direction of hardware reuse is a blessed one,” Dr. Eyal Cohen, CEO and co-founder of CogniFiber, told Lifewire via email. “We sincerely hope that such a chip will be useful and scalable.”
The MIT researchers have put their plan into practice by designing a chip for simple image recognition tasks. This chip is currently trained specifically to recognize three letters: M, I, and T. They have published the details of the chip in the journal Nature Electronics.
