7 months ago
China's ACCEL Chip 12x Faster, 1/200th Energy of Digital Rivals
Chinese scientists have created a special computer chip called ACCEL that uses light to do calculations.
This chip is much faster and uses much less energy than regular computer chips.
It can do things like recognizing pictures and helping self-driving cars make decisions.
The chip is so efficient that it can run for over five centuries on the same energy a regular chip uses in one hour.
This new technology could help make computers more powerful and use less electricity, which is good for the environment.
The chip was made using older technology, so it doesn't need the newest and most expensive parts.
Right now, it's really good at specific tasks like recognizing videos, but it can't do everything a regular computer chip can do.
ACCEL is an analogue AI chip developed by Tsinghua University that uses light for computations.
It runs 12 times faster and uses 1/200th the energy of traditional digital processors.
ACCEL achieves 74.8 peta-operations per second per watt in energy efficiency.
The chip performs vision-related AI tasks 3,000 times faster than NVIDIA’s A100 GPU.
It was manufactured using older, accessible transistor technology, not requiring advanced sub-5nm fabrication.
- Who
- Researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing
- What
- Developed an analogue AI chip called ACCEL
- Where
- China
- When
- Recently (exact date not specified)
- Why
- To improve speed and energy efficiency in AI computations
Key facts
- Chip Name
- ACCEL (All-Analogue Chip Combining Electronic and Light Computing)
- Developer
- Tsinghua University, Beijing
- Speed
- 12 times faster than digital processors
- Energy Efficiency
- 74.8 peta-operations per second per watt
- Performance
- 3,000 times faster than NVIDIA’s A100 GPU in vision tasks
- Applications
- Image recognition, autonomous driving, recommendation systems
- Manufacturing
- Older, accessible transistor technology (not sub-5nm)
- Accuracy
- Over 90% in video recognition




