Created the first optical chip of non-volatile memory with stable performance
Welcome to our readers on the pages of the blog iCover ! Today we want to talk about the first fully optical chip of non-volatile memory - the joint development of scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the universities of Münster, Oxford and Exeter.
The ability to use light and optical components of the circuit creates a new future for information and communication technologies, revealing fundamentally new horizons of efficiency and speed of computing systems.
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While optical fiber has long been a familiar way of transmitting light information, existing computer systems use 100% of the capabilities of binary logic by processing electrical signals and enabling electronic circuit solutions. The implementation of the “electronic scenario” of data exchange between the processor and RAM is one of the main factors limiting the speed of current computers and the bottleneck in the architect von Neumann.
The cardinal solution of the problem is not limited to the organization of the optical interface between the processor and the memory, since this will not eliminate the need for mutual conversion of optical and electrical signals between them. Such a solution should be associated with the development of a method for processing and storing information that would allow all operations with data to be carried out solely due to the potential of photon-optical technologies.
For a long time, experiments with photon memory did not allow to achieve sustainable results. In this sense, an optical chip with non-volatile photon memory - a joint development of scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, KIT) and the universities of Münster, Oxford, Exeter can be called epochal. The proposed method of recording information will allow to drastically improve the performance of the existing computational architecture by reducing the delays associated with the conversion of an electrical signal.
The practical implementation of the optical chip concept with non-volatile memory was made possible by using a unique PSM material of the new generation Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) - a chalcogenide compound capable of changing the phase of the crystal lattice from amorphous to crystalline and back under the influence of ultrashort pulsed laser radiation. Thus, the optical and “logical” properties of a PSM crystal (amorphous and crystalline state) are determined by the nature of the arrangement of the atoms of the crystal lattice and can be set artificially by means of modified laser radiation.
Information is also read by laser pulses of lesser intensity. Since for any change in the state of the crystal lattice, only an external directed effect of laser radiation is required, the recorded information can be stored without external energy access for decades. And in this regard, the chip is non-volatile.
“The recording frequency of optical bits can reach 1 GHz. This provides an extremely high speed of our fully photonic memory, ”said Wolfram Pernice, the head of the research group at KIT, a professor at the University of Münster. It is important that “... such memory today may be compatible with standard fiber optic data transmission system. And the proposed algorithms for accessing the contents of the cells allow us to combine the new memory with the latest generation of processors ... ”- adds Professor Garish Bhaskaran (Harish Bhaskaran). Thus, in a single multi-level cell in billionths of a meter, you can store and autonomously process at the simplest logical level up to 8 bits of information, recording and storing several states at once.
Fully optical permanent memory integrated on an innovative chip can significantly increase the speed of computers, significantly reducing their power consumption. A multi-level random access chip will enable much greater computing power. For a single reading of information and switching of intermediate states at a speed of 1 GHz, energy of 13.4 pJ is enough (1 picojoule = 10⁻¹² Joule). In this case, individual memory elements can be created by using the principle of wavelength multiplexing. Thus, a fully optical multi-level non-volatile chip, which allows partially to get rid of the bottleneck of the von Neumann architecture, becomes one of the most important links in the future computing architecture of photon-optical computers.
Of course, the use of all the potential inherent in the newest chip is associated with the prospect of performing large amounts of work in various directions. However, despite the long-term perspective of creating photon analogs of modern microprocessors, using the capabilities of already existing electronic processors in conjunction with an optical memory chip is a qualitatively new level of information processing. And for the practical implementation of such a scheme, it will be enough to create a fiber-optic interface in which the energy-intensive process of converting electrical signals into optical signals and vice versa will be carried out only on the processor side.
More information about the results of research and the history of the revolutionary chip can be found on the pages of the journal Nature Photonics .
Dear readers, we are always happy to meet and wait for you on the pages of the blog iCover! We are ready to continue to delight you with our publications and we will try to do everything possible so that the time spent with us will give you pleasure. And, of course, do not forget to subscribe to our headings and we promise you won't be bored!
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The ability to use light and optical components of the circuit creates a new future for information and communication technologies, revealing fundamentally new horizons of efficiency and speed of computing systems.
')
While optical fiber has long been a familiar way of transmitting light information, existing computer systems use 100% of the capabilities of binary logic by processing electrical signals and enabling electronic circuit solutions. The implementation of the “electronic scenario” of data exchange between the processor and RAM is one of the main factors limiting the speed of current computers and the bottleneck in the architect von Neumann.
The cardinal solution of the problem is not limited to the organization of the optical interface between the processor and the memory, since this will not eliminate the need for mutual conversion of optical and electrical signals between them. Such a solution should be associated with the development of a method for processing and storing information that would allow all operations with data to be carried out solely due to the potential of photon-optical technologies.
For a long time, experiments with photon memory did not allow to achieve sustainable results. In this sense, an optical chip with non-volatile photon memory - a joint development of scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, KIT) and the universities of Münster, Oxford, Exeter can be called epochal. The proposed method of recording information will allow to drastically improve the performance of the existing computational architecture by reducing the delays associated with the conversion of an electrical signal.
The practical implementation of the optical chip concept with non-volatile memory was made possible by using a unique PSM material of the new generation Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) - a chalcogenide compound capable of changing the phase of the crystal lattice from amorphous to crystalline and back under the influence of ultrashort pulsed laser radiation. Thus, the optical and “logical” properties of a PSM crystal (amorphous and crystalline state) are determined by the nature of the arrangement of the atoms of the crystal lattice and can be set artificially by means of modified laser radiation.
Information is also read by laser pulses of lesser intensity. Since for any change in the state of the crystal lattice, only an external directed effect of laser radiation is required, the recorded information can be stored without external energy access for decades. And in this regard, the chip is non-volatile.
“The recording frequency of optical bits can reach 1 GHz. This provides an extremely high speed of our fully photonic memory, ”said Wolfram Pernice, the head of the research group at KIT, a professor at the University of Münster. It is important that “... such memory today may be compatible with standard fiber optic data transmission system. And the proposed algorithms for accessing the contents of the cells allow us to combine the new memory with the latest generation of processors ... ”- adds Professor Garish Bhaskaran (Harish Bhaskaran). Thus, in a single multi-level cell in billionths of a meter, you can store and autonomously process at the simplest logical level up to 8 bits of information, recording and storing several states at once.
Fully optical permanent memory integrated on an innovative chip can significantly increase the speed of computers, significantly reducing their power consumption. A multi-level random access chip will enable much greater computing power. For a single reading of information and switching of intermediate states at a speed of 1 GHz, energy of 13.4 pJ is enough (1 picojoule = 10⁻¹² Joule). In this case, individual memory elements can be created by using the principle of wavelength multiplexing. Thus, a fully optical multi-level non-volatile chip, which allows partially to get rid of the bottleneck of the von Neumann architecture, becomes one of the most important links in the future computing architecture of photon-optical computers.
Of course, the use of all the potential inherent in the newest chip is associated with the prospect of performing large amounts of work in various directions. However, despite the long-term perspective of creating photon analogs of modern microprocessors, using the capabilities of already existing electronic processors in conjunction with an optical memory chip is a qualitatively new level of information processing. And for the practical implementation of such a scheme, it will be enough to create a fiber-optic interface in which the energy-intensive process of converting electrical signals into optical signals and vice versa will be carried out only on the processor side.
More information about the results of research and the history of the revolutionary chip can be found on the pages of the journal Nature Photonics .
Dear readers, we are always happy to meet and wait for you on the pages of the blog iCover! We are ready to continue to delight you with our publications and we will try to do everything possible so that the time spent with us will give you pleasure. And, of course, do not forget to subscribe to our headings and we promise you won't be bored!
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/384737/
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