Asynchronous Nanowire Reconfigurable Crossbar Architecture for Manufacturability, Scalability, Robustness and Defect & Fault-Tolerance

本研究的目的是开发一种新型的异步纳米线交叉结构，以解决与传统时钟对应的各种设计和制造问题。该方法是基于延迟不敏感的编码和握手技术，称为传统逻辑（NCL）。智能优点：通过实现控制和数据表示之间的分离，所提出的架构提供了整个设计的自同步。不需要沿着与纳米线交叉杆一起制造时钟分配网络。此外，由非确定性纳米级组装引起的许多与时序相关的故障模式和参数变化本质上是可以容忍的。由于所有时序信息都嵌入编码中并在本地处理，因此即使要编程的电路大小增加，时序复杂度也保持不变。因此，潜在的好处，从提出的无时钟的纳米线交叉杆架构包括改进的可制造性，可扩展性，模块化和robusts.Broader的影响：结果和发现，从拟议的研究将有助于打破带宽限制，高密度的纳米线交叉杆为基础的计算系统，这是更可制造性，可扩展性和鲁棒性，可以很容易地实现的异步架构。该项目的成果将通过科学论文、软件和在线演示积极传播，可从项目网站和NANOHUB.ORG访问。该项目还将包括针对本科生和代表性不足的少数民族的研究和教育活动以及与工业伙伴的跨学科研究合作的主要组成部分。

The objective of this research is to develop novel asynchronous nanowire crossbar architecture to address various design and manufacturing issues with conventional clocked counterpart. The approach is based on a delay-insensitive encoding and handshaking technique known as Null Convention Logic (NCL). Intellectual Merit:By enabling separation between control and data representations, the proposed architecture provides self-synchronization throughout the design. No clock distribution network needs to be fabricated along with nanowire crossbars. Also numerous timing-related failure modes and parametric variations caused by nondeterministic nanoscale assembly can be intrinsically tolerated. Since all timing information is embedded in the encoding and locally handled, the timing complexity remains the same even though the size of the circuit to be programmed increases. Therefore, potential benefits from the proposed clock-free nanowire crossbar architecture include improved manufacturability, scalability, modularity and robustness.Broader Impact:Results and findings from the proposed research will be helpful to break the photolithographic limit; high-density nanowire crossbar-based computing systems, which are more manufacturable, scalable and robust, can be easily realized by the proposed asynchronous architecture. The results of the project will be actively disseminated by scientific papers, software and online demos, which can be accessed from the project website and NANOHUB.ORG. This project will also include a major component of research and education activities for undergraduates and under-represented minorities and interdisciplinary research collaboration with industrial partner.