CRII: CSR: End-to-End Approach to Ultra-Low Power IoT: From New Nanotechnologies to New System Architectures

虽然大规模分布式传感和计算节点-形成物联网（IoT）-承诺彻底改变我们的生活，但它们对计算性能和能源效率的要求远远超过当今电子产品的能力。此外，改进计算系统的传统方法产生的回报越来越少。相反，需要整个计算堆栈的协调发展。在这项提案中，我们利用新兴的纳米技术的独特性能，实现节能设备以及新的节能计算系统架构，这是不可能实现与今天的硅基系统。这项工作为构建和测试下一代物联网计算系统的硬件原型奠定了基础，这些系统与当今的系统截然不同，包括新技术和新系统架构。（一维和二维纳米材料，如碳纳米管）和存储器（非易失性存储器，例如RRAM）以实现针对IoT应用的单片三维集成电路。初步工作的重点是解决实现这些未来系统的可行性，通过开发组合处理和电路设计技术，以克服这些新兴纳米技术固有的缺陷的主要挑战。同时，正在探索单片三维集成电路的大型架构设计空间，并针对物联网应用进行优化。这个建筑设计空间包括正在同时开发的新兴纳米技术。由于这些进步，我们正在设计和制造利用新兴纳米技术的未来物联网系统的第一个硬件演示。

While massively distributed sensing and computing nodes - forming the Internet of Things (IoT) - promise to revolutionize our lives, their demands on computing performance and energy efficiency far exceed the capabilities of today's electronics. Moreover, conventional approaches to improve computing systems are yielding diminishing returns. Rather, coordinated advances across the entire computing stack are required. In this proposal, we leverage the unique properties of emerging nanotechnologies to realize both energy-efficient devices as well as novel energy-efficient computing system architectures that are not possible to realize with today's silicon-based systems. This work forms the foundation to build and test hardware prototypes of next-generation IoT computing systems that are radically different than today's systems, encompassing both new technologies and new system architectures.The technical objectives are to use emerging nanotechnologies for logic (1D and 2D nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes) and memory (non-volatile memories, such as RRAM) to realize monolithic three-dimensional integrated circuits targeting IoT applications. Initial work focuses on addressing the feasibility of realizing these future systems, by developing combined processing and circuit design techniques to overcome the major challenges of imperfections inherent in these emerging nanotechnologies. Simultaneously, the large architectural design space for monolithic three-dimensional integrated circuits is being explored, optimized for IoT applications. This architectural design space includes the emerging nanotechnologies that are simultaneously being developed. Due to these advances, we are designing and fabricating the first hardware demonstration of a future IoT system leveraging emerging nanotechnologies.