Keralite in team signalling in-memory computing

Kottayam: A team, comprising Ettumanoor native Dr Abu Sebastian and a group of scientists at the IBM Research Laboratory in Switzerland, has shown how to perform computations or calculations in the memory.

This is considered a significant step towards finding an alternate way to compute without consuming so much energy and area.

The finding titled ‘Temporal correlation detection using computational phase- change memory’ appeared in the prestigious journal ‘Nature Communications’ on October 24. Responding to Deccan Chronicle in an email interview, Abu explained the significance of the findings as follows:

“A big focus of research these days is on building highly energy efficient cognitive computers. People are trying to understand how to alter the architecture or organisation of computers so that they are more efficient. Many people are looking at the human brain for inspiration in an attempt to see how the brain computes in such an energy-efficient manner. The new way of computing we have found is in marked contrast to the existing way of computing based on the von Neumann architecture proposed in 1945 by the Hungarian American mathematician John von Neumann. In that architecture, there is a physical separation between where information is stored and where we perform calculations on them.  This means that we need to move around data whenever we need to calculate something. This is one reason why our computers, especially when used for data-centric artificial intelligence and related applications, which are very compute intensive, are highly inefficient,” he said in the interview.

The new way of computing which performs computations or calculations in the memory itself is expected to be a significant step towards addressing the energetic costs of computing.

Dr Abu received his Master’s and PhD degrees from Iowa State University in the USA. He is a scientist at IBM Research - Zurich since 2006.