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

异步纳米线可重构交叉架构，可实现可制造性、可扩展性、鲁棒性和缺陷

• 批准号: 0801362
• 负责人: Minsu Choi
• 金额: $ 26.57万
• 依托单位: Missouri University of Science and Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-05-01 至 2012-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0801362&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Asynchronous; Nanowire; Reconfigurable; Crossbar; Architecture

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.

本研究的目的是开发一种新的异步纳米线交叉结构，以解决传统时钟对应物的各种设计和制造问题。该方法基于延迟不敏感编码和握手技术，称为空约定逻辑（NCL）。智力优势：通过支持控制和数据表示之间的分离，所建议的体系结构在整个设计中提供自同步。时钟分配网络不需要与纳米线交叉条一起制造。此外，由不确定性纳米级组装引起的许多与时间相关的失效模式和参数变化在本质上是可以容忍的。由于所有的时序信息都嵌入到编码中并在本地处理，因此即使要编程的电路的大小增加，时序复杂性也保持不变。因此，所提出的无时钟纳米线交叉棒架构的潜在好处包括提高可制造性、可扩展性、模块化和鲁棒性。更广泛的影响：所提出的研究结果和发现将有助于打破光刻技术的限制；采用异步结构可实现高密度纳米线交叉棒计算系统，提高了系统的可制造性、可扩展性和鲁棒性。该项目的成果将通过科学论文、软件和在线演示（可从项目网站和NANOHUB.ORG访问）积极传播。该项目还将包括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。