Memcomputers

Memory and Processing

The human brain both stores and processes information at the same time as opposed to conventional computers which store information in a dedicated location and move it back and forth as required by the processor(s). This back and forth leads to what is known as the "Neumann bottleneck", which is a major limitation for modern computers.

But what if computers could be built in such a way that they combined memory and processing similar to how our brains work? Such a computer would be able to avoid the Neumann bottleneck and would be capable of tackling problems beyond the capability of conventional computers. That's exactly what researchers are trying to do, creating what has been dubbed a "memcomputer".

Here is an interesting article I came across on hacked.com talking about the work:

RESEARCHERS DEVELOP FIRST WORKING MEMPROCESSORS, PLAN FUTURE ULTRA-FAST MEMCOMPUTERS

Researchers from San Diego and Turin have developed the first working "memcomputer" prototype, with brain-inspired "memprocessors" able to simultaneously perform computation and memory operations, which could open the way to ultra-fast future computers. The researchers, headed by Massimiliano Di Ventra, a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have published their work in Science Advances. The research paper, titled "Memcomputing NP-complete problems in polynomial time using polynomial resources and collective states," is freely available online.

Ultra-Fast Brain-Inspired Computing

Memcomputing, inspired by neuronal information processing in the brain, is defined as computing and storing information within the same units, interacting memory cells called memprocessors. The theoretical concept of memcomputing has been around for some time, but the researchers claim that theirs is the first working implementation. Traditional computers use separate computing and memory units, and therefore must shuffle a lot of data back and forth, which consumes power and time. The brain doesn't shuffle that much information, which is one of the reasons it's much more energy-efficient than current computers.

"To make a quick comparison: our own brain expends about 20 watts to perform 10^16 operations per second," Di Ventra explained to Popular Mechanics, while a supercomputer would require 10 million times more power to do the same number of operations. "A big chunk of that power is wasted in the back and forth transfer of information between the CPU and the memory." A memprocessor operates like a transistor, but also changes some of its physical properties, such as its electrical resistance, depending on incoming data and instructions. Therefore, a memprocessor can perform computation and data storage simultaneously.

Article Continues Here

Here is an article from 2012 on the future development of memcomputers