1,427 research outputs found
Nature-Inspired Interconnects for Self-Assembled Large-Scale Network-on-Chip Designs
Future nano-scale electronics built up from an Avogadro number of components
needs efficient, highly scalable, and robust means of communication in order to
be competitive with traditional silicon approaches. In recent years, the
Networks-on-Chip (NoC) paradigm emerged as a promising solution to interconnect
challenges in silicon-based electronics. Current NoC architectures are either
highly regular or fully customized, both of which represent implausible
assumptions for emerging bottom-up self-assembled molecular electronics that
are generally assumed to have a high degree of irregularity and imperfection.
Here, we pragmatically and experimentally investigate important design
trade-offs and properties of an irregular, abstract, yet physically plausible
3D small-world interconnect fabric that is inspired by modern network-on-chip
paradigms. We vary the framework's key parameters, such as the connectivity,
the number of switch nodes, the distribution of long- versus short-range
connections, and measure the network's relevant communication characteristics.
We further explore the robustness against link failures and the ability and
efficiency to solve a simple toy problem, the synchronization task. The results
confirm that (1) computation in irregular assemblies is a promising and
disruptive computing paradigm for self-assembled nano-scale electronics and (2)
that 3D small-world interconnect fabrics with a power-law decaying distribution
of shortcut lengths are physically plausible and have major advantages over
local 2D and 3D regular topologies
A guided tour of asynchronous cellular automata
Research on asynchronous cellular automata has received a great amount of
attention these last years and has turned to a thriving field. We survey the
recent research that has been carried out on this topic and present a wide
state of the art where computing and modelling issues are both represented.Comment: To appear in the Journal of Cellular Automat
Assessing Random Dynamical Network Architectures for Nanoelectronics
Independent of the technology, it is generally expected that future nanoscale
devices will be built from vast numbers of densely arranged devices that
exhibit high failure rates. Other than that, there is little consensus on what
type of technology and computing architecture holds most promises to go far
beyond today's top-down engineered silicon devices. Cellular automata (CA) have
been proposed in the past as a possible class of architectures to the von
Neumann computing architecture, which is not generally well suited for future
parallel and fine-grained nanoscale electronics. While the top-down engineered
semi-conducting technology favors regular and locally interconnected
structures, future bottom-up self-assembled devices tend to have irregular
structures because of the current lack precise control over these processes. In
this paper, we will assess random dynamical networks, namely Random Boolean
Networks (RBNs) and Random Threshold Networks (RTNs), as alternative computing
architectures and models for future information processing devices. We will
illustrate that--from a theoretical perspective--they offer superior properties
over classical CA-based architectures, such as inherent robustness as the
system scales up, more efficient information processing capabilities, and
manufacturing benefits for bottom-up designed devices, which motivates this
investigation. We will present recent results on the dynamic behavior and
robustness of such random dynamical networks while also including manufacturing
issues in the assessment.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, IEEE/ACM Symposium on Nanoscale Architectures,
NANOARCH 2008, Anaheim, CA, USA, Jun 12-13, 200
Reservoir Computing Approach to Robust Computation using Unreliable Nanoscale Networks
As we approach the physical limits of CMOS technology, advances in materials
science and nanotechnology are making available a variety of unconventional
computing substrates that can potentially replace top-down-designed
silicon-based computing devices. Inherent stochasticity in the fabrication
process and nanometer scale of these substrates inevitably lead to design
variations, defects, faults, and noise in the resulting devices. A key
challenge is how to harness such devices to perform robust computation. We
propose reservoir computing as a solution. In reservoir computing, computation
takes place by translating the dynamics of an excited medium, called a
reservoir, into a desired output. This approach eliminates the need for
external control and redundancy, and the programming is done using a
closed-form regression problem on the output, which also allows concurrent
programming using a single device. Using a theoretical model, we show that both
regular and irregular reservoirs are intrinsically robust to structural noise
as they perform computation
A Survey of Cellular Automata: Types, Dynamics, Non-uniformity and Applications
Cellular automata (CAs) are dynamical systems which exhibit complex global
behavior from simple local interaction and computation. Since the inception of
cellular automaton (CA) by von Neumann in 1950s, it has attracted the attention
of several researchers over various backgrounds and fields for modelling
different physical, natural as well as real-life phenomena. Classically, CAs
are uniform. However, non-uniformity has also been introduced in update
pattern, lattice structure, neighborhood dependency and local rule. In this
survey, we tour to the various types of CAs introduced till date, the different
characterization tools, the global behaviors of CAs, like universality,
reversibility, dynamics etc. Special attention is given to non-uniformity in
CAs and especially to non-uniform elementary CAs, which have been very useful
in solving several real-life problems.Comment: 43 pages; Under review in Natural Computin
- …