Latest Future Gadgets- Probabilistic Chips

A new chip could improve error correction in flash memory, and might also lead to more efficient spam filtering and shopping recommendations.

Lyric Semiconductor, a small MIT spinoff, has created an error correction chip that uses a technique called “probability processing” to guess the right answer or solve a problem.

The chip, called LEC, is 30 times smaller in size than current digital error correction technology. That means manufacturers can create higher density chips that offer more storage at lower costs.

“This is not digital computing in the traditional sense,” says Ben Vigoda, founder of Lyric Semiconductor. “We are looking at processing where the values can be between a zero and a one.”

Error rates in flash-based storage are of concern to both consumers and manufacturers.

“The issue with flash is you get higher and higher bit errors as you move to smaller geometry,” says Greg Wong, an analyst with research firm Forward Insights, “so to discern data that is in there you have to use probability type of algorithms.”

Today, one in every thousand bits stored in a flash memory comes out wrong when the memory is read. With the next generation of flash memory, the number of errors is expected to approach one wrong bit out of every hundred.

For consumers, this  means a music file that they play from their flash storage disk could sound wrong — or a file could get corrupted. To avoid that, flash memory makers have to use error correction, much of which is currently done using software algorithms.

The problem with software-based solutions is that they use digital signal processing circuits that add to the size of the chip, says Wong.

“This is an area where cost is a very sensitive factor,” he says. “So if you can reduce the size of the circuitry, there’s a big benefit there.”

Despite its tiny size, the Lyric LEC contains “a Pentium’s worth of computation,” says Vigoda.