July 24, 2018 // By Peter Clarke, eeNews
Semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker Applied Materials Inc. has been selected by DARPA to work with ARM Ltd. and research firm Symetrix Corp. to develop a switch that functions like the neuron and synapses of the human brain, based on Correlated-Electron RAM (CeRAM) technology.
The project is part of DARPA's Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) to develop new computing materials, designs and architectures. ERI has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent over the next four or five years. The goal of the particular project is to speed up neural network processing while improving power efficiency through the use of analog signal processing as compared to current digital approaches.