This memory chip works at 700 degrees Celsius. The startup behind it is already building AI chips that compute where GPUs cannot.

USC researchers built a memristor that operates at 700 degrees Celsius, hotter than molten lava and far beyond Venus surface temperatures, while TetraMem, the startup commercialising the technology, has already moved its room-temperature AI inference chips to 300mm production wafers with SK hynix and CHIPS Act support.

Every probe humanity has sent to Venus has died. The Soviet Venera landers survived between 23 minutes and two hours on a surface where the temperature exceeds 460 degrees Celsius. Their electronics, designed to endure heat that would melt lead, still failed. The longest-lived mission in the history of Venus exploration lasted 127 minutes. Then the chips stopped working and the data stopped flowing.

A team at the University of Southern California has built a memory chip that operates reliably at 700 degrees Celsius, hotter than molten lava, and more than 200 degrees beyond anything Venus could throw at it. The device, published ...