Technology could lead to more-powerful reconfigurable microchips
A technology that would allow a computer chip to change the electrical resistance of some of its own wiring could lead to more-powerful reconfigurable microchips that can quickly adapt themselves to new tasks, researchers at IBM say.
Engineers at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., produced a prototype device based on a type of material found in experimental memory chips. Normally, a “via,” a hole leading from one layer of a chip’s wiring to another, is filled with a metal such as tungsten to provide an electrical connection between the layers.
But in this case, the researchers used a phase-change material, a substance whose conductance can be switched between two states by briefly melting it. “By changing the state of the phase-change material, you create an on-off switch,” says Kuan-Neng Chen, the research staff member who led the project.
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