Chaos-based microchips propose a challenge to Moore's Law

Developed by researchers at North Carolina State University, the integrated circuits can reportedly be manufactured with off the shelf fabrication processes and could lead to novel computer architectures that do more with less circuitry and fewer transistors.

Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years in order to keep up with processing demands. This goal has so far been addressed by shrinking the size of individual transistors so that more could be added to the chip. However, that solution is becoming untenable, and the semiconductor industry is looking for new ways to create better computer chips.

“We’re reaching the limits of physics in terms of transistor size, so we need a new way to enhance the performance of microprocessors,” said Behnam Kia, senior research scholar in physics at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work. “We propose utilising chaos theory – the system’s own nonlinearity – to enable transistor circuits to be programmed to perform different tasks. A very simple nonlinear transistor circuit contains very rich patterns. Different patterns that represent different functions coexist within the nonlinear dynamics of the system, and they are selectable. We utilize these dynamics-level behaviours to perform different processing tasks using the same circuit. As a result we can get more out of less.”