"While the noise appears random in nature, it has a probabilistic structure that allows the algorithm to guess what it might be."

"The researchers tested the GRAND chip and found it could effectively decode any moderate redundancy code up to 128 bits in length, with only about a microsecond of latency."

What a poorly worded title. For those browsing, this is referring to error codes and the like.

If you're not familiar with information theory, hamming codes, data compression, and the like, the title might be misread as "decryption." Sorry, nothing to do with breaking ciphers.

The article is about a new chip that can efficiently process lossless coding across different transmission algorithms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

Journal paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8630851 PDF: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/129702/1802.0...

Also conf paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9517890 for which PDF can be obtained via scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Mana...

I tested this article and found it free of both errors and information.

What about FPGA's it's a chip capable of decoding any data sent across a network and correcting errors! /s I guess the clever part here with this algorithm is that it tries to figure error correction automatically instead of having to have someone make a design like on a fpga.

I find a part of the subtitle a bit self-contradictory:

"New chip eliminates the need for specific decoding hardware"

I think what the author means is 'new chip could be used as a single decoding circuit instead of having a chip combining all the protocols and algorithms'.

I can't help but think that this would be primarily used for censorship and breaking net neutrality.

They mean decoding at the level of extracting a signal & correcting errors in it from being sent across a wire, fiber, or broadcast. This is not the cracking encryption meaning of decoding.

The terms "coding" and "decoding" here are very specific terms of art, as it turns out. It's a confusing headline even for a general programmer audience.

China's great firewall has been using statistical analysis to kill connections that it suspects to be unauthorized encrypted channels.