The market may be sinking lower today, but that hasn't stopped the Strategic Elements Ltd (ASX: SOR) share price from rocketing higher.
In morning trade, the technology-focused investment and development company's shares are up a massive 39% to a record high of 23 cents.
Why is the Strategic Elements share price rocketing higher?
Investors have been buying the company's shares this morning following the release of an announcement relating to its printable Nanocube Memory technology.
According to the release, testing has confirmed that the printable Nanocube Memory technology has potential as printable brain-inspired (neuromorphic) computing hardware.
Management explained that work at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has confirmed that the Nanocube Memory structure and operation allows it to combine computing and memory in one place in a way similar to how biological neurons operate.
Why is this important?
The company notes that experts in the memory technology sector believe the future of computing will be about rethinking processor architecture from the ground up to emulate how a brain efficiently processes information.
The artificial synapses fabricated by UNSW using the Nanocube Memory technology provides a potential hardware solution that has combined data storage and processing abilities, a key to neuromorphic computing.
In addition, the technology has the potential to store a range of values (as resistance states), rather than just traditional ones and zeros. This allows it to mimic the way the strength of a connection between two biological synapses can vary. It notes that changing those synaptic weights (connection strength) in artificial synapses in neuromorphic computing is one way to allow the brain-based system to achieve self-learning.
How was it tested?
The release explains that "in order to test the artificial synapses fabricated using the Nanocube Memory technology for synaptic plasticity, a memristor device was fabricated and subjected to consecutive positive and negative current-voltage (I-V) sweeps which showed incremental decrease in resistance of the memristor device with positive voltage sweeps and incremental increase in resistance of the memristor device with negative voltage sweeps."
The company advised that this shows the core synaptic function of synaptic plasticity of the memristor technology.
"Next, when electrical signals are applied to a biological synapse, the connection strength between neurons can be excited (potentiation) or inhibited (depression) which can be interpreted as the memorizing and forgetting behaviour of the human brain."
What's next?
Further early-stage work on features such as stability, potentiation, depression, latency, and power requirements will continue and be reported in the first quarter 2021.
The company also revealed that it is very pleased with progress of its printable self-recharging battery technology and remains on track to announce further information in January.
