Bio-inspired Adaptive Architectures and Systems

高度集成的计算系统的复杂性不断增加，需要对潜在的大量可用的交互资源进行越来越复杂的监视和控制，以便有效地管理和利用它们。技术创新正在推动设备和系统设计考虑，例如，从多核（2-10核）到多核（数十万核）的转变，以及设计混合技术平台。然而，这些系统将如何在体系结构上构建，以及它们将如何被控制和编程，都还不清楚。与这些系统相关的主要问题包括可靠性和在线优化，以及这些复杂系统的有效利用。考虑到这些系统的尺寸，以及管理下一代技术对故障日益敏感的设计和测试工作，对可靠性的需求是显而易见的。在这里，我们建议研究硬件和软件系统，其设计是由生物学原理驱动的。主要活动将是设计、评价和利用这些系统。这将涉及生物启发技术的进步，以构建未来的微电子系统。这将涵盖此类系统的拓扑结构，这些系统既需要大规模并行，又需要处理不可靠的组件，例如由于特征尺寸不断减小而导致的设备可变性。对新的制造方法（如3D制造）和新材料（如分子器件）的需求将对微电子系统设计的未来至关重要，并将构成本研究的重要组成部分。

The ever-increasing complexity of highly integrated computing systems requires more and more complex levels of monitoring and control over the potentially large number of interacting resources available in order to manage and exploit them effectively. Technology innovations are driving device and systems design to consider, for example, a move from multi-core (2-10 cores) to many-core (hundreds-thousands of cores) and to design hybrid technology platforms. However, it is still neither obvious how these systems will be constructed architecturally nor how they will be controlled and programmed. Major issues related to these systems include reliability and on-line optimisation, as well as the efficient utilisation of these complex systems. The need for reliability in such systems is obvious, considering their size and the huge design and test efforts required to manage the increasing sensitivity to faults of next-generation technologies.Here we propose research into hardware and software systems whose designs are motivated by biological principles. The main activities will be in the design, evaluation and exploitation of such systems. This will concern the advancement of bio-inspired techniques to construct microelectronic systems of the future. This will cover the topology of such systems that will both be massively parallel and will be required to cope with unreliable components, such as the variability of devices resulting from the continuing reduction in feature size. The need for new manufacturing methods such as 3D fabrication and new materials such as molecular devices will be critical for the future of microelectronic system design and will form a significant part of this research.