Repair hardware with software

A COMPUTER science boffin has come up with a way of repairing faulty hardware using software.

Josep Torrellas, of the University of Illinois, said that if chips come with an efficient repair mechanism then they can be fixed like broken software, with patches.

He told Technology Review that defective chips can be expensive for computer manufacturers, especially when the hardware is recalled.

Torrellas's system is still in development, but he says it could ultimately make chip production faster and cheaper.

It is based around a bit of hardware called Phoenix which sits on the chip and can be programmed to detect defects and fix them.

He has got Phoenix running on a field programmable gate array so far.

It works like antivirus software, which uses downloaded virus information to identify and eliminate new threats.

Manufacturers can automatically transmit the patch to all machines that might be affected. He added that a Phoenix-enabled chip would also have a shorter time to market, because manufacturers could skip the last few weeks of testing, knowing that ultimately, they can solve problems with patches.

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