Emerging Nanoelectronic Devices

24Alternative Architectures for NonBoolean Information Processing Systems

Yan Fang¹, Steven P. Levitan¹, Donald M. Chiarulli¹¹, and Denver H. Dash²

¹Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, USA

²Intel Science and Technology Center, USA

24.1 Introduction

In this chapter we explore algorithms and develop an architecture based on emerging nano-device technologies for cognitive computing tasks such as recognition, classification, and vision. Though the performance of computing systems has been continuously improving for decades, for cognitive tasks that humans are adept at, our machines are usually ineffective despite the rapid increases in computing speed and memory size. Moreover, given the fact that CMOS technology is approaching the limits of scaling, computing systems based on traditional Boolean logic may not be the best choice for these special computing tasks due to their massive parallelism and complex nonlinearities. On the other hand, recent research progress in nanotechnology provides us opportunities to access alternative devices with special nonlinear response characteristics that fit cognitive tasks better than general purpose computation. Building circuits, architectures, and algorithms around these emerging devices may lead us to a more efficient solution to cognitive computing tasks or even artificial intelligence. This chapter presents several nonBoolean architecture models and algorithms based on nano-oscillators to address ...