China’s new chip stores data with a single electron, breaking AI memory bottleneck

Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai have developed a two-dimensional flash memory chip that stores data using a single electron at room temperature, a tenfold improvement over previous single-electron attempts. The device, named Guiyi and detailed in a paper published on July 16 in Science, could enable AI chat models to run on mobile phones with minimal power without losing memory during conversations.

Advertisement China’s new chip stores data with a single electron, breaking AI memory bottleneck The technology enables AI chat models to run on phones using minimal power, without ‘losing memory’ during conversations 2-MIN READ2-MIN Listen How many electrons does it take to store a single bit of information? For today’s most advanced dynamic random access memory DRAM chips from Samsung and SK Hynix, the answer is roughly 200,000. That is the price of reliability – a vast reservoir of charge needed to ensure a “1” or “0” does not fade into noise. But a team at Fudan University in Shanghai has just collapsed that number to its theoretical floor: one. In a paper published on July 16 in Science, microelectronics professor Zhou Peng and his colleagues detailed a working two-dimensional 2D flash memory that traps and reads a solitary electron at room temperature – a feat long regarded as the holy grail for semiconductors https://www.scmp.com/topics/semiconductors?gad source=1&gad campaignid=23561166950&gbraid=0AAAAADltBQC8ecg0S7zfucskPK0lC2iQD&gclid=Cj0KCQjw94bTBhDQARIsAN3vv0y4uscE5rzQsgEI3iZXjPlaAglMTIX-BI BazBfdWKJ4MLSpdnlBkEaAs-cEALw wcB?module=inline&pgtype=article .The device, which they named Guiyi, lifts a faint, fleeting signal from just tens of millivolts to a robust 0.5 volts, a tenfold improvement over any previous single-electron attempt. For the general public, the most direct impact of this technology is that it makes it possible to run large language models on mobile phones using minimal power, without the artificial intelligence AI https://www.scmp.com/topics/artificial-intelligence?module=inline&pgtype=article “losing its memory” during conversations.Advertisement Select Voice Select Speed 1.00x