Inexact Chip Is 15 Times More Efficient; To Be Used In I-slate For Indian Classrooms

Researchers from Rice University in Houston, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Switzerland’s Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) and the University of California, Berkeley have showcased a new next-gen 'inexact' computer microchip that is said to be 15 times more power and resource efficient than existing technology. It has only one weak point and it is that this chip allows for occasional errors. Prototypes of this chip were unveiled at the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers in Cagliari, Italy. Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID) is working with CSEM to create next-gen inexact microchips to use a fraction of the electricity of today’s microprocessors.

By cleverly allowing errors to slip in (the ones that won't have a wrecking effect), the researchers are now able to drastically cur energy requirements and increase the performance. Another approach to inexact design is “pruning,”. They trimmed away the rarely used portions of digital circuits on the microchips. And what they found was clearly astonishing. The pruned chips were twice as fast, used half as much energy and were half the size.



ISAID is going to use this inexact chips in the I-Slate educational tablet, which is a low-cost tablet designed specifically for Indian classrooms. In schools that have no electricity and too few teachers, I-Slate tablet will be a good choice as it will run on solar power (similar to those handheld calculators) The Officials in India’s Mahabubnagar District has decided to adopt 50,000 I-slates into middle and high school classrooms over the next three years.

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