Heidemarie Krüger: This woman is developing the chip of the future
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|Dresden physicist Heidemarie Krüger has developed a chip that works based on the model of the human brain. With her deep-tech startup, she could solve some of the tech world's problems.
Computer chips have become increasingly more powerful and smaller in recent decades: Today's cell phones calculate faster than the giant computers NASA used to control the moon landing in 1969. And now no laptop, no car, no sensor, no robot, and no artificial intelligence can function without chips. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted the rapid development in performance back in the 1960s: the number of transistors on silicon chips, i.e., certain electronic components, would double at regular intervals. But Moore's Law is now reaching its physical limits; transistors cannot become infinitely smaller; and the constant flow of data between memory and processor consumes a lot of time and energy. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global electricity consumption by data centers this year will be around 415 terawatt hours. That's about 1.5 percent of global consumption. By 2030, this figure is expected to more than double, partly due to the increasing use of artificial intelligence.
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