Synapse Semiconductor

Synapse Semiconductor is a semiconductor research lab developing chips that combine sensing and compute on the same device. The lab addresses the problem of cameras capturing all visual data and sending it to GPU compute for processing; its chip is designed to understand and filter what it sees, transmitting only relevant information onward.

The lab's research centers on a layer of compute that can also see and remember, with each transistor co-located with high-bandwidth memory that is sensitive to light, removing the separation between camera, GPU, and memory. Work spans devices, transistors, compute, sensors, and memory systems, with research into 2D materials and amorphous oxide semiconductors alongside silicon. The lab is based at Duke.