878 research outputs found
CMOL: Second Life for Silicon?
This report is a brief review of the recent work on architectures for the
prospective hybrid CMOS/nanowire/ nanodevice ("CMOL") circuits including
digital memories, reconfigurable Boolean-logic circuits, and mixed-signal
neuromorphic networks. The basic idea of CMOL circuits is to combine the
advantages of CMOS technology (including its flexibility and high fabrication
yield) with the extremely high potential density of molecular-scale
two-terminal nanodevices. Relatively large critical dimensions of CMOS
components and the "bottom-up" approach to nanodevice fabrication may keep CMOL
fabrication costs at affordable level. At the same time, the density of active
devices in CMOL circuits may be as high as 1012 cm2 and that they may provide
an unparalleled information processing performance, up to 1020 operations per
cm2 per second, at manageable power consumption.Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions
(http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions
A Compact CMOS Memristor Emulator Circuit and its Applications
Conceptual memristors have recently gathered wider interest due to their
diverse application in non-von Neumann computing, machine learning,
neuromorphic computing, and chaotic circuits. We introduce a compact CMOS
circuit that emulates idealized memristor characteristics and can bridge the
gap between concepts to chip-scale realization by transcending device
challenges. The CMOS memristor circuit embodies a two-terminal variable
resistor whose resistance is controlled by the voltage applied across its
terminals. The memristor 'state' is held in a capacitor that controls the
resistor value. This work presents the design and simulation of the memristor
emulation circuit, and applies it to a memcomputing application of maze solving
using analog parallelism. Furthermore, the memristor emulator circuit can be
designed and fabricated using standard commercial CMOS technologies and opens
doors to interesting applications in neuromorphic and machine learning
circuits.Comment: Submitted to International Symposium of Circuits and Systems (ISCAS)
201
Memcapacitive Devices in Logic and Crossbar Applications
Over the last decade, memristive devices have been widely adopted in
computing for various conventional and unconventional applications. While the
integration density, memory property, and nonlinear characteristics have many
benefits, reducing the energy consumption is limited by the resistive nature of
the devices. Memcapacitors would address that limitation while still having all
the benefits of memristors. Recent work has shown that with adjusted parameters
during the fabrication process, a metal-oxide device can indeed exhibit a
memcapacitive behavior. We introduce novel memcapacitive logic gates and
memcapacitive crossbar classifiers as a proof of concept that such applications
can outperform memristor-based architectures. The results illustrate that,
compared to memristive logic gates, our memcapacitive gates consume about 7x
less power. The memcapacitive crossbar classifier achieves similar
classification performance but reduces the power consumption by a factor of
about 1,500x for the MNIST dataset and a factor of about 1,000x for the
CIFAR-10 dataset compared to a memristive crossbar. Our simulation results
demonstrate that memcapacitive devices have great potential for both Boolean
logic and analog low-power applications
Can my chip behave like my brain?
Many decades ago, Carver Mead established the foundations of neuromorphic systems. Neuromorphic systems are analog circuits that emulate biology. These circuits utilize subthreshold dynamics of CMOS transistors to mimic the behavior of neurons. The objective is to not only simulate the human brain, but also to build useful applications using these bio-inspired circuits for ultra low power speech processing, image processing, and robotics. This can be achieved using reconfigurable hardware, like field programmable analog arrays (FPAAs), which enable configuring different applications on a cross platform system. As digital systems saturate in terms of power efficiency, this alternate approach has the potential to improve computational efficiency by approximately eight orders of magnitude. These systems, which include analog, digital, and neuromorphic elements combine to result in a very powerful reconfigurable processing machine.Ph.D
Principles of Neuromorphic Photonics
In an age overrun with information, the ability to process reams of data has
become crucial. The demand for data will continue to grow as smart gadgets
multiply and become increasingly integrated into our daily lives.
Next-generation industries in artificial intelligence services and
high-performance computing are so far supported by microelectronic platforms.
These data-intensive enterprises rely on continual improvements in hardware.
Their prospects are running up against a stark reality: conventional
one-size-fits-all solutions offered by digital electronics can no longer
satisfy this need, as Moore's law (exponential hardware scaling),
interconnection density, and the von Neumann architecture reach their limits.
With its superior speed and reconfigurability, analog photonics can provide
some relief to these problems; however, complex applications of analog
photonics have remained largely unexplored due to the absence of a robust
photonic integration industry. Recently, the landscape for
commercially-manufacturable photonic chips has been changing rapidly and now
promises to achieve economies of scale previously enjoyed solely by
microelectronics.
The scientific community has set out to build bridges between the domains of
photonic device physics and neural networks, giving rise to the field of
\emph{neuromorphic photonics}. This article reviews the recent progress in
integrated neuromorphic photonics. We provide an overview of neuromorphic
computing, discuss the associated technology (microelectronic and photonic)
platforms and compare their metric performance. We discuss photonic neural
network approaches and challenges for integrated neuromorphic photonic
processors while providing an in-depth description of photonic neurons and a
candidate interconnection architecture. We conclude with a future outlook of
neuro-inspired photonic processing.Comment: 28 pages, 19 figure
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