Over the past few decades, the transistors in computer chips have become progressively smaller and faster, allowing upwards of a billion individual transistors to be packed into a single circuit, thus shrinking the size of electronic devices. But these circuits have an intractable design flaw: if just a single transistor fails, the entire circuit also fails. One novel way around the problem is a so-called self-healing circuit. Such circuits are "inspired by biological systems that constantly heal themselves in the presence of random and intentional failures," says Caltech professor Ali Hajimiri.
Written by
Briana Ticehurst
![Ali Hajimiri](https://divisions-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/eas70/Imported%20News%20Images/images/hajimiri.width-450.jpg)
Image Lightbox
![Ali Hajimiri](https://divisions-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/eas70/Imported%20News%20Images/images/hajimiri.max-1400x800.jpg)
Professor Ali Hajimiri
Download Full Image