FROM A COMPUTER CHIP modelled on the human brain that can make its own decisions, to one that can survive for weeks on Venus, computer chip technology is constantly developing at an incredibly rapid rate.
Here, we take a look at some of the most bizarre, tiniest and most endurable computer chips, and what they mean for the future of technology.
As it’s becoming difficult to exponentially shrink the chips that power our phones and computers, some scientists have begun to apply the brain’s structure to building microchips instead.
Engineers at The University of Tennessee created a microchip late last year that simulates the way neurons and synapses in a brain operate.
According to Irish technology magazine Tech Central, these chips are structured to discover patterns through probabilities and association, helping with decision making, and paving the way for technology that enables computers to ‘learn’.
When Charlie Warzel, a senior writer for Buzzfeed News, was writing an article about what the future of money would look like, he took it upon himself to spend a month paying for everything using only his phone, relying on apps like Apple Pay, Paypal and Circle.
A few weeks into his endeavour, he took a trip to Sweden (where they are far advanced in the aim of using less cash) to have a radio frequency identification chip about the size of a pill surgically implanted into his hand that connected to a pay app on his phone.
Back in New York, he became the first person in the world to be able to pay for his dinner back using only the swipe of his hand.
One of the most exciting parts of microchip technology is that it’s always developing, and just last week it was announced that NASA have developed a microchip that can withstand 470°C heat (the temperature that solid lead will melt at) without any form of protection or cooling system for weeks at a time.
This particular computer chip, which is made from silicon carbide, can also survive in the 9 MPa atmospheric pressure on the planet, which is 90 times higher than it is on Earth.
The chip has been tested successfully to work for three weeks in a Glenn Extreme Environments Rig, which is a specially designed system to emulate the conditions on Venus for several hundred hours at a time.
Way back when Barack Obama was only a candidate, engineers at The University of Michigan created “nanobamas”, tiny portraits of him made from rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms called nanotubes that were too small to be seen by the naked eye.
Inspired by this, engineers in Stanford University created similar electronic chips featuring portraits of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump last year, except this time they did not use nanotubes but a chemical called molybdenum.
Molybdenum is only three atoms thick and one of the many materials scientists are studying that could make see-through electronic devices in future.
Deep within Silicon Valley in Mountain View, California, lies the Computer History Museum, which in 2015 unveiled an exhibition centred around the world’s smallest computer, the Michigan Micro Mote (M³).
The M³ is a solar-powered operational computer made by researchers at The University of Michigan that’s so small that 150 of them fit in a thimble.
The computers can measure temperature, pressure or takes images and it is thought that these technologies may be able to be inserted into the eyes of glaucoma sufferers to monitor their intraocular pressure.
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