Neuro-memristive Circuits for Edge Computing: A review

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

The effect of low-energy ion-implantation on the electrical transport properties of Si-SiO2 MOSFETs

Using silicon MOSFETs with thin (5nm) thermally grown SiO2 gate dielectrics, we characterize the density of electrically active traps at low-temperature after 16keV phosphorus ion-implantation through the oxide. We find that, after rapid thermal annealing at 1000oC for 5 seconds, each implanted P ion contributes an additional 0.08 plus/minus 0.03 electrically active traps, whilst no increase in the number of traps is seen for comparable silicon implants. This result shows that the additional traps are ionized P donors, and not damage due to the implantation process. We also find, using the room temperature threshold voltage shift, that the electrical activation of donors at an implant density of 2x10^12 cm^-2 is ~100%.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Integrated circuit interface for artificial skins

Artificial sensitive skins are intended to emulate the human skin to improve the skills of robots and machinery in complex unstructured environments. They are basically smart arrays of pressure sensors. As in the case of artificial retinas, one problem to solve is the management of the huge amount of information that such arrays provide, especially if this information should be used by a central processing unit to implement some control algorithms. An approach to manage such information is to increment the signal processing performed close to the sensor in order to extract the useful information and reduce the errors caused by long wires. This paper proposes the use of voltage to frequency converters to implement a quite straightforward analog to digital conversion as front end interface to digital circuitry in a smart tactile sensor. The circuitry commonly implemented to read out the information from a piezoresistive tactile sensor can be modified to turn it into an array of voltage to frequency converters. This is carried out in this paper, where the feasibility of the idea is shown through simulations and its performance is discussed.Gobierno de España TEC2006-12376-C02-01, TEC2006-1572

Basic protocols in quantum reinforcement learning with superconducting circuits

Superconducting circuit technologies have recently achieved quantum protocols involving closed feedback loops. Quantum artificial intelligence and quantum machine learning are emerging fields inside quantum technologies which may enable quantum devices to acquire information from the outer world and improve themselves via a learning process. Here we propose the implementation of basic protocols in quantum reinforcement learning, with superconducting circuits employing feedback-loop control. We introduce diverse scenarios for proof-of-principle experiments with state-of-the-art superconducting circuit technologies and analyze their feasibility in presence of imperfections. The field of quantum artificial intelligence implemented with superconducting circuits paves the way for enhanced quantum control and quantum computation protocols.Comment: Published versio

Dispersive Manipulation of Paired Superconducting Qubits

We combine the ideas of qubit encoding and dispersive dynamics to enable robust and easy quantum information processing (QIP) on paired superconducting charge boxes sharing a common bias lead. We establish a decoherence free subspace on these and introduce universal gates by dispersive interaction with a LC resonator and inductive couplings between the encoded qubits. These gates preserve the code space and only require the established local symmetry and the control of the voltage bias.Comment: 5 pages, incl. 1 figur

Design of a Cooper pair box electrometer for application to solid-state and astroparticle physics

We describe the design and principle of operation of a fast and sensitive electrometer operated at millikelvin temperatures, which aims at replacing conventional semiconducting charge amplifiers in experiments needing low back-action or high sensitivity. The electrometer consists of a Cooper Pair box (CPB) coupled to a microwave resonator, which converts charge variations to resonance frequency shifts. We analyze the dependence of the sensitivity on the various parameters of the device, and derive their optimization. By exploiting the nonlinearities of this electrometer, and using conventional nanofabrication and measurement techniques, a charge sensitivity of a few $10^{- 7} e / \sqrt{Hz}$ can be achieved which outperforms existing single charge electrometers.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure