October 5, 2010
Flash Memory and Probability Processing
Lyric Semiconductor, Inc. recently announced its achievement in probability processing for NAND flash memory that will herald greater energy efficiency, speedier computations and smaller form. Lyric is a DARPA and venture funded MIT spin-out whose goal has been to redesign current information processing circuits from the ground up. This endeavor has led into two directions for the startup company.
LEC, or Lyric Error Correction, is an award winning technology aimed at flash memory. Flash error rates have become increasingly problematic with each new generation of technology (Lyric, 2010). One in a thousand bits of data stored in flash memory reads incorrectly when accessed. Future generations of flash memory will be nearer to one bit in a hundred incorrect. Flash manufacturers invest billions of dollars in increasing the maximum size of flash memory available while data precision suffers. Error correctors have become larger and more complex equating to increased cost for flash production. LEC is the companys first endeavor into commercial probability processing with its advanced error corrector for flash memory that is 30x smaller, has 12x less power consumption and operates at a higher bandwidth than digital error correctors currently available. Though currently working on projects with the U.S. Department of Defense, Lyric is looking for manufacturers to license LEC technology which will include support services to help flash memory makers integrate LEC into manufacturing processes within 12 months.
The newest undertaking by Lyric is GP5, or General Purpose Programmable Probability Processing Platform, which takes LEC a step further by incorporating probability into processors. This would mean a 1000x performance boost over x86 based systems. The GP5 will run code written in Lyrics own probability programming language called PSBL, or Probability Synthesis to Bayesian Logic, an expressive computer programming language for working with probability based computations (Lyric, 2010). This will accelerate and improve search, fraud detection, spam filtering, financial modeling, genome sequence analysis and many other applications that involve simultaneously considering many possible alternatives and deciding on the best fit.
Lyric claims that these technologies are neither traditionally digital nor traditionally analog processes but rather a new way of computing. LEC and GP5 are being viewed as ground breaking improvements in complex computing as well as consumer experience in the digital age.
Reference
Lyric Semiconductor Inc., (2010).
LEC, or Lyric Error Correction, is an award winning technology aimed at flash memory. Flash error rates have become increasingly problematic with each new generation of technology (Lyric, 2010). One in a thousand bits of data stored in flash memory reads incorrectly when accessed. Future generations of flash memory will be nearer to one bit in a hundred incorrect. Flash manufacturers invest billions of dollars in increasing the maximum size of flash memory available while data precision suffers. Error correctors have become larger and more complex equating to increased cost for flash production. LEC is the companys first endeavor into commercial probability processing with its advanced error corrector for flash memory that is 30x smaller, has 12x less power consumption and operates at a higher bandwidth than digital error correctors currently available. Though currently working on projects with the U.S. Department of Defense, Lyric is looking for manufacturers to license LEC technology which will include support services to help flash memory makers integrate LEC into manufacturing processes within 12 months.
The newest undertaking by Lyric is GP5, or General Purpose Programmable Probability Processing Platform, which takes LEC a step further by incorporating probability into processors. This would mean a 1000x performance boost over x86 based systems. The GP5 will run code written in Lyrics own probability programming language called PSBL, or Probability Synthesis to Bayesian Logic, an expressive computer programming language for working with probability based computations (Lyric, 2010). This will accelerate and improve search, fraud detection, spam filtering, financial modeling, genome sequence analysis and many other applications that involve simultaneously considering many possible alternatives and deciding on the best fit.
Lyric claims that these technologies are neither traditionally digital nor traditionally analog processes but rather a new way of computing. LEC and GP5 are being viewed as ground breaking improvements in complex computing as well as consumer experience in the digital age.
Reference
Lyric Semiconductor Inc., (2010).
