The scoop on artificial synapses

For some time now, we’ve been hearing people tell us that, soon enough, we’ll have circuitry more powerful and more efficient than the human mind. It looks like we might finally be on the edge of this becoming true, too: circuitry inspired by biology is in the process of being created to help create low-powered AI chips.

While this is still very much in an early developmental phase, the hope is that – with some hurdles still to overcome – we could start creating AI chips with far less demand than we presently can.

Indeed, this latest finding from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology has created something very impressive indeed. They have developed a new magnetically controlled electronic synapse. This new synapse is going to be made like an AI version of the very ones which link neurons within the mind. However, they are much faster than our brains: millions of times faster, in fact.

With using around 1/1000^th of the energy of the brain, too, this is by far and away the most efficient – in both performance and power use – artificial synapse to date. With the ability to gather so many signals and fire out electronic pulses all at once, this could be a much more impressive alternative to the more traditional transistor.

Created by using neuromorphic chips, these will work very much in the similar function to the human brain. This is naturally causing immense excitement within the scientific community. This would allow for us to easily run things like artificial networks – a key construct of modern AI development – with even greater control and efficiency than ever before.

Best of all? It would allow for vast increases and changes with regards to energy efficiency: the results could be absolutely outstanding.

Still some work to be done

However, as you may expect, such hardware still has a veritable glut of issues to be worked out and corrected. For sample, they are yet to be upscaled to work within a large device, so it’s hard to be clear about whether or not a chip could be built onto one. Also, they are going to be running at temperatures of around 5K at present: no normal computing practice would allow for such conditions.

So, while the development of a new artificial synapse does feel closer than ever, it’s also pretty clear that it’s still something very much for the decade(s) to come.