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MIT Wants to Make Computing as Easy as Breathing

Washington Post

Thursday 18 November 2004, 2:21 pm
Keywords: Computer Topics , News Articles

By Leslie Walker

The MIT professor and researcher explained that the prototype wasn't about size or shape. It was about the invisible wiring on its silicon chip, designed so it can be reprogrammed to allow one device to perform many tasks, allowing a cell phone to morph suddenly into a TV or scanner. Today's computer chips, by contrast, are pre-wired with fixed sets of instructions.

He wants to redesign chip software and hardware for the mobile age, creating chips that can power chameleon devices. If devices were chameleon-like, he reasons that people could get more done with less gear, theoretically making computing more mobile. Also, devices embedded in "intelligent" rooms and stationary objects could accomplish more simply by retrieving new instruction sets.

"Call it a universal logic chip that can do anything."

"About a year ago, we started developing the operating system, which needs a lot of properties, including the ability to be rapidly configurable."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58945-2004Nov17.html