AI on a chip

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is destined to transform our society, affecting every aspect of our lives. However, a key bottleneck towards the proliferation of the technology is the lack of efficient hardware that will allow us to embed AI everywhere – well beyond the cloud’s reach. Up until now, the processing of data in electronics has relied on assemblies of vast numbers of transistors – microscopic switches that control the flow of electrical current by turning it on or off. Transistors have got smaller and smaller in order to meet the increasing demands of technology, but have nowadays reached their physical limit, with – for example – the processing chips that power smartphones containing an average of seven billion transistors that are only a few atoms wide.

A novel nanoelectronic technology, known as the memristor, proclaims to hold the key to a new era in electronics and AI, being both smaller and simpler in form than transistors, low-energy, and with the ability to retain data by ‘remembering’ the amount of charge that has passed through them – akin to the behaviour of synaptic connections in the human brain. In his lecture, Professor of Nanotechnology and Head of the Electronic Materials and Devices Research Group in the Zepler Institute, University of Southampton Themis Prodromakis presents a few examples on how such technologies can be used in practical applications, demonstrating our ability to deliver “AI on a chip”.