'Pruned' microchips are faster, smaller, more energy-efficient
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 16:31
in Physics & Chemistry
Computing experts from the United States, Switzerland and Singapore have unveiled a technique for doubling the efficiency of computer chips by trimming away rarely used circuits. While these "pruned" microchips make a few calculation errors, tests show that cleverly managing the errors can yield chips that are two times faster, consume about half the energy and take up about half the space of traditional microchips.