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

这项研究的目的是开发新型的异步纳米线交叉开关结构，以解决与传统时钟结构对应的各种设计和制造问题。该方法基于一种称为空约定逻辑(NCL)的延迟不敏感编码和握手技术。智能优点：通过实现控制和数据表示之间的分离，建议的体系结构在整个设计过程中提供自同步。不需要与纳米线交叉棒一起制造时钟分布网络。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也可以在本质上被容忍。由于所有定时信息都嵌入编码中并在本地处理，因此即使要编程的电路的大小增加，定时复杂性也保持不变。因此，提出的无时钟纳米线交叉开关体系结构的潜在好处包括改进的可制造性、可扩展性、模块化和健壮性。广泛影响：拟议研究的结果和发现将有助于打破光刻限制；基于高密度纳米线交叉开关的计算系统可以很容易地通过所提出的异步体系结构实现，该计算系统更具可制造性、可扩展性和健壮性。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获取。该项目还将包括针对本科生和代表性不足的少数群体的研究和教育活动的一个主要组成部分，以及与行业合作伙伴的跨学科研究合作。

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.