CRISP : Cutting-Edge Reconfigurable ICs For Stream Processing

Day by day, the computer processor chips that are coming in the market are growing smaller, faster and more energy efficient. The processor available now are dual core, quad core etc. But the smaller they are made, the more fragile they are going to get. So what if we could use the same chip even after it has been partially damaged? The Cutting-Edge Reconfigurable ICs for Stream Processing or CRISP provides an answer to this.

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Though many people describe this as self-repairing chips, my opinion differs with them. Firstly, I will tell you the jest of the CRISP technology. There chips are capable of performing the work they are designed to do even after a partial damage. The aim of research in this direction is to device such a single chip that can be used for varied range of applications at the same time being scalable and reconfigurable. The chip will be basically a multi-core chip. Now what makes this chip so special is that it can reconfigure itself even during the run-time. Somewhat similar to the hyper threading technology, these chips will also have a number of cores. Each core is assigned to do a particular limited task which will be a subset of a larger task. The chip will come with a resource manager which will command different cores to do different tasks. Now, incase ant of the core on the chip goes down, the chip as a whole will not stall its working. The new chips will be so configured that in a situation of damage to any single core, the tasks will be re-routed.

Now, there are one or two issues related with this. First is that this technology will enable the chips to work with their full available capacity even in case of a partial damage. This is of particular use to highly dependable machines and gadgets that employ a processor. The other thing is that this will help in optimal use of the natural resources. The number of processor chips that are being manufactured today in tremendously high and requires large amount of raw material. Moreover this part of a CPU is irreparable. So once damaged, we just have to fix in another similar chip in its place. So if such re-routable chips are manufactured, it will help us to cut down on the material requirement for manufacture. Thirdly, the amount of computer waste the world is generating is enormous. So we will be able to cut down on that too.

The energy efficiency and other compatibility criteria of these chips are still behind curtains though, at least as of now.  Still, we can always hope for the best.

Image credits:  HotHardware | Computing And Tech Enthusiast News And Product Reviews

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