Seamlessly fused digital-analogue reconfigurable computing using memristors

Nat Commun. 2018 Jun 4;9(1):2170. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-04624-8.

Abstract

As the world enters the age of ubiquitous computing, the need for reconfigurable hardware operating close to the fundamental limits of energy consumption becomes increasingly pressing. Simultaneously, scaling-driven performance improvements within the framework of traditional analogue and digital design become progressively more restricted by fundamental physical constraints. Emerging nanoelectronics technologies bring forth new prospects yet a significant rethink of electronics design is required for realising their full potential. Here we lay the foundations of a design approach that fuses analogue and digital thinking by combining digital electronics with analogue memristive devices for achieving charge-based computation; information processing where every dissipated charge counts. This is realised by introducing memristive devices into standard logic gates, thus rendering them reconfigurable and capable of performing analogue computation at a power cost close to digital. The versatility and benefits of our approach are experimentally showcased through a hardware data clusterer and an analogue NAND gate.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't