Scientists in China have developed a new chip, with a twist: it's analog, meaning it performs calculations on its own physical circuits rather than via the binary 1s and 0s of standard digital processors.
What’s more, its creators say the new chip is capable of outperforming top-end graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia and AMD by as much as 1,000 times.
In a new study published Oct. 13 in the journal Nature Electronics , researchers from Peking University said their device tackled two key bottlenecks: the energy and data constraints digital chips face in emerging fields like artificial intelligence (AI) and 6G, and the "century-old problem" of poor precision and impracticality that has limited analog computing .
When put to work on complex communications problems — including matrix inversion problems used in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems (a wireless technological system) — the chip matched the accuracy of standard digital processors while using about 100 times less energy.
By making adjustments, the researchers said the device then trounced the performance of top-end GPUs like the Nvidia H100 and AMD Vega 20 by as much as 1,000 times. Both chips are major players in AI model training; Nvidia's H100, for instance, is the newer version of the A100 graphics cards, which OpenAI used to train ChatGPT.
The new device is built from arrays of resistive random-access memory (RRAM) cells that store and process data by adjusting how easily electricity flows through each cell.
Unlike digital processors that compute in binary 1s and 0s, the analog design processes information as continuous electrical currents across its network of RRAM cells. By processing data directly within its own hardware, the chip avoids the energy-intensive task of shuttling information between itself and an external memory source.
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"With the rise of applications using vast amounts of data, this creates a challenge for digital computers, particularly as traditional device scaling becomes increasingly challenging," the researchers said in the study. "Benchmarking shows that our analogue computing approach could offer a 1,000 times higher throughput and 100 times better energy efficiency than state-of-the-art digital processors for the same precision."
Old tech, new tricks
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