48,183 research outputs found

    ToPoliNano: Nanoarchitectures Design Made Real

    Get PDF
    Many facts about emerging nanotechnologies are yet to be assessed. There are still major concerns, for instance, about maximum achievable device density, or about which architecture is best fit for a specific application. Growing complexity requires taking into account many aspects of technology, application and architecture at the same time. Researchers face problems that are not new per se, but are now subject to very different constraints, that need to be captured by design tools. Among the emerging nanotechnologies, two-dimensional nanowire based arrays represent promising nanostructures, especially for massively parallel computing architectures. Few attempts have been done, aimed at giving the possibility to explore architectural solutions, deriving information from extensive and reliable nanoarray characterization. Moreover, in the nanotechnology arena there is still not a clear winner, so it is important to be able to target different technologies, not to miss the next big thing. We present a tool, ToPoliNano, that enables such a multi-technological characterization in terms of logic behavior, power and timing performance, area and layout constraints, on the basis of specific technological and topological descriptions. This tool can aid the design process, beside providing a comprehensive simulation framework for DC and timing simulations, and detailed power analysis. Design and simulation results will be shown for nanoarray-based circuits. ToPoliNano is the first real design tool that tackles the top down design of a circuit based on emerging technologie

    Janus II: a new generation application-driven computer for spin-system simulations

    Get PDF
    This paper describes the architecture, the development and the implementation of Janus II, a new generation application-driven number cruncher optimized for Monte Carlo simulations of spin systems (mainly spin glasses). This domain of computational physics is a recognized grand challenge of high-performance computing: the resources necessary to study in detail theoretical models that can make contact with experimental data are by far beyond those available using commodity computer systems. On the other hand, several specific features of the associated algorithms suggest that unconventional computer architectures, which can be implemented with available electronics technologies, may lead to order of magnitude increases in performance, reducing to acceptable values on human scales the time needed to carry out simulation campaigns that would take centuries on commercially available machines. Janus II is one such machine, recently developed and commissioned, that builds upon and improves on the successful JANUS machine, which has been used for physics since 2008 and is still in operation today. This paper describes in detail the motivations behind the project, the computational requirements, the architecture and the implementation of this new machine and compares its expected performances with those of currently available commercial systems.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure

    Memory performance of and-parallel prolog on shared-memory architectures

    Get PDF
    The goal of the RAP-WAM AND-parallel Prolog abstract architecture is to provide inference speeds significantly beyond those of sequential systems, while supporting Prolog semantics and preserving sequential performance and storage efficiency. This paper presents simulation results supporting these claims with special emphasis on memory performance on a two-level sharedmemory multiprocessor organization. Several solutions to the cache coherency problem are analyzed. It is shown that RAP-WAM offers good locality and storage efficiency and that it can effectively take advantage of broadcast caches. It is argued that speeds in excess of 2 ML IPS on real applications exhibiting medium parallelism can be attained with current technology

    Neuro-memristive Circuits for Edge Computing: A review

    Full text link
    The volume, veracity, variability, and velocity of data produced from the ever-increasing network of sensors connected to Internet pose challenges for power management, scalability, and sustainability of cloud computing infrastructure. Increasing the data processing capability of edge computing devices at lower power requirements can reduce several overheads for cloud computing solutions. This paper provides the review of neuromorphic CMOS-memristive architectures that can be integrated into edge computing devices. We discuss why the neuromorphic architectures are useful for edge devices and show the advantages, drawbacks and open problems in the field of neuro-memristive circuits for edge computing
    corecore