Nanoelectronic Synapse
September 27, 2011 | Terry Sharrer
In some ways, the microtransistor and neural synapse are similar-they both convey information in a complex network. But they are fundamentally different in that the living synapse can change function as it “learns” from repeated experience, while the transistor can only do forever what it did from the start. But a Stanford research group hopes to gain ground on the synapse’s plasticity with “phase-change materials” that work something like the dimmer switch on a light source. They claim: “Using well-understood manufacturing processes, we can construct a cross-point architecture allowing three-dimensional stacking of layers that could one day approach the density, compactness and massive parallelism of the human brain.” MORE