Professors Park Young-ran, left, and Wang Gun-uk of the KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology / Courtesy of Korea University

Researchers at Korea University have developed a dual-output artificial synapse designed to improve the energy efficiency of multitasking artificial intelligence (AI) systems, the university said Monday.

The research was led by professors Wang Gun-uk and Park Young-ran of the KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology, a joint program established by Korea University and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology.

The human brain carries out many tasks at once, processing a stream of signals in parallel with remarkable efficiency. Conventional AI chips, in contrast, are typically built for narrowly defined functions. As a result, juggling multiple operations often requires breaking computations into separate parts or running them in sequence — a design that can sharply increase power consumption.

Replicating the brain's capability has become a growing focus in AI research as systems require increasing amounts of computing power and electricity.

The KU-KIST team created a brain-inspired artificial synapse that emits both electrical and optical signals simultaneously, enabling AI systems to handle multiple tasks in parallel on a single chip. The device demonstrated stable learning behavior across about 1,000 distinct states, according to the researchers.

In testing, the device improved computational speed by up to 47 percent and reduced energy consumption by as much as 32 times compared with conventional GPU-based hardware accelerators.

"This achievement presents a new hardware architecture for multitasking AI through an artificial synapse that simultaneously utilizes electrical and optical signals," Wang said. "It could be further expanded to high-speed, low-power AI systems in fields requiring complex decision-making, such as robotics, medical and health care applications, and autonomous driving."

The study was published Friday inScience Advances,a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Source: Korea Times News