By far the most daunting task facing nanoelectronics are the wires, being at the heart of power/energy consumption, as: (i) their numbers are increasing exponentially (as each device needs a few wires); and (ii) they do not scale well for quite some time (their parasitic capacitances and RCdelays are not scaling in synch with devices). Innovations on both classical (i.e., based-on-wires, hence evolutionary) as well as on advanced (i.e., without-wire/beyond-wire, hence revolutionary) communication schemes are urgently needed. Trying to find inspiration from the neurons, we investigate here how axons are able to communicate at quite large distances on a very limited power budget. In particular, the paper analyzes axon-inspired communications as dense locallyconnected arrays/lattices of voltage-gated (i.e., non-linear) ion channels. The theoretical results presented here suggest that hexagonal (or hex-connected) arrays would be the least power hungry ones.
This paper revisits a transistor sizing method for CMOS gates, which relies on upsizing the length (L) and balancing the voltage transfer characteristics for maximizing the static noise margins (SNM's). It leads to highly reliable gates, able to operate over the whole voltage range. The improvements are: (i) calculating the threshold voltage (V th ) exactly (leading to exact L's); (ii) more accurate SNM estimations (using the maximum square method); (iii) sizing the widths for single input transitions. Simulations for INV, NAND-2, and NOR-2 show that V th and L change by ~2%, while SNM's increase by ~30%, with power and energy being reduced ~10× and ~20× respectively.
Power consumption has been recognized as a grand challenge for nanoelectronics. With continuous scaling, wires (much more than devices) are going to be determining (almost entirely) the dynamic power: (i) their numbers are increasing exponentially, as each device needs a few wires; and (ii) they do not scale well, as their parasitic capacitances and RCdelays are not scaling in synch with device scaling. That is why innovations on both evolutionary (i.e., based-on-wires) as well as revolutionary (i.e., without-wire, or beyond-wire) solutions are called upon to tackle this challenge. Trying to find inspiration from neurons, we focus on axons which are able to communicate at quite large distances on an amazingly limited power budget. In particular, the paper analyzes axon-inspired communications as dense locally-connected arrays of voltage-gated (non-linear) ion channels. Our theoretical results suggest that hexagonal arrays should minimize power consumption. Emulating the logical functioning of voltage-gated ion channels by single-electron technology/transistor gates can lead to practical power/energy lower bounds for nanoelectronics.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.