China Develops Atom-Thin RISC-V Microprocessor WUJI

Photo: WAM

A group of researchers in China has created a new type of microprocessor that is so thin, it's made from materials just a few atoms thick. This new chip is named WUJI, and it is a 32-bit RISC-V processor.

The chip is special because it uses two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors instead of the usual silicon. These 2D materials are incredibly thin—thousands of times thinner than a human hair—but they still conduct electricity and can be used to make electronic parts.

The WUJI chip is built on the RISC-V architecture, which is a kind of blueprint for processors. RISC-V is popular because it is open-source, meaning anyone can use or improve it without paying money. It is also known for using less power and being easy to customize, which makes it great for research and new technology.

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Even though this new chip is tiny, it is quite powerful. It has 5,900 transistors, which are the tiny switches that help a processor think and calculate. It also comes with a standard set of 25 different logic gates, which are the basic building blocks of computer operations. This allows the chip to do math operations like addition and subtraction on up to 4.2 billion pieces of data. In fact, it can handle up to 1 billion instructions, according to Zhou Peng, a professor at Fudan University and one of the main people behind the project.

The details of this study were published this week in the famous science journal Nature.

The team explained that they built their chip using the same ideas and techniques used in today’s silicon-based chips but adjusted them to work with 2D materials. They also created a better way of building the chip, called an "optimised process flow", to make everything run smoothly.

To make all this work, the team used advanced AI (artificial intelligence) tools. These AI programs helped the researchers carefully control every step, from growing the materials to putting the parts together. Professor Zhou said that this helped solve some of the biggest problems in using 2D materials in chips.

Thanks to their hard work, the researchers were able to build a working chip prototype that shows the huge promise of 2D technology. This is a big step forward, and it could lead to faster, thinner, and more energy-efficient chips in the future—possibly changing how computers, phones, and other smart devices are made.