Does this computer architecture assume not-comp?
15046Synchronized oscillators may allow for computing that works like the
brain
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- richard ruquist
May 15 2:09 PM
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Synchronized oscillators may allow for computing that works like the
brainMay 15, 2014
[image: oscillating_switch]
This is a cartoon of an oscillating switch, the basis of a new type of
low-power analog computing (credit: Credit: Nikhil Shukla, Penn State)
Computing is currently based on binary (Boolean) logic, but a new type
of computing architecture created by electrical engineers at Penn
State<http://www.psu.edu/> stores
information in the frequencies and phases of periodic signals and could
work more like the human brain.
It would use a fraction of the energy necessary for today’s computers,
according to the engineers.
To achieve the new architecture, they used a thin film of vanadium oxide
on a titanium dioxide substrate to create an oscillating switch. Vanadium
dioxide is called a “wacky oxide” because it transitions from a conducting
metal to an insulating semiconductor and vice versa with the addition of a
small amount of heat or electrical current.
*Biological synchronization for associative processing*
Using a standard electrical engineering trick, Nikhil Shukla, graduate
student in electrical engineering, added a series resistor to the oxide
device to stabilize oscillations. When he added a second similar
oscillating system, he discovered that, over time, the two devices began to
oscillate in unison, or synchronize.
This coupled system could provide the basis for non-Boolean computing.
Shukla worked with Suman Datta, professor of electrical engineering, and
co-advisor Roman Engel-Herbert, assistant professor of materials science
and engineering, Penn State. They reported their results May 14 in
*Scientific
Reports* (open access).
“It’s called a small-world network,” explained Shukla. “You see it in
lots of biological systems, such as certain species of fireflies. The males
will flash randomly, but then for some unknown reason the flashes
synchronize over time.” The brain is also a small-world network of closely
clustered nodes that evolved for more efficient information processing.
“Biological synchronization is everywhere,” added Datta. “We wanted to
use it for a different kind of computing called associative processing,
which is an analog rather than digital way to compute.”
An array of oscillators can store patterns — for instance, the color of
someone’s hair, their height and skin texture. If a second area of
oscillators has the same pattern, they will begin to synchronize, and the
degree of match can be read out, without consuming a lot of energy and
requiring a lot of transistors, as in Boolean computing.
*A neuromorphic computer chip*
Datta is collaborating with Vijay Narayanan, professor of computer
science and engineering, Penn State, in exploring the use of these coupled
oscillations to solve visual recognition problems more efficiently than
existing embedded vision processors.
Shukla and Datta called on the expertise of Cornell University materials
scientist Darrell Schlom to make the vanadium dioxide thin film, which has
extremely high quality similar to single crystal silicon. Arijit
Raychowdhury, computer engineer, and Abhinav Parihar graduate student, both
of Georgia Tech, mathematically simulated the nonlinear dynamics of coupled
phase transitions in the vanadium dioxide devices.
Parihar created a short video simulation of the transitions, which occur
at a rate close to a million times per second, to show the way the
oscillations synchronize. Venkatraman Gopalan, professor of materials
science and engineering, Penn State, used the Advanced Photon Source at
Argonne National Laboratory to visually characterize the structural changes
occurring in the oxide thin film in the midst of the oscillations.
Datta believes it will take seven to 10 years to scale up from their
current network of two-three coupled oscillators to the 100 million or so
closely packed oscillators required to make a neuromorphic computer chip.
One of the benefits of the novel device is that it will use only about
one percent of the energy of digital computing, allowing for new ways to
design computers. Much work remains to determine if vanadium dioxide can be
integrated into current silicon wafer technology.
The Office of Naval Research primarily supported this work. The National
Science Foundation’s Expeditions in Computing Award also supported this
work.
------------------------------
*Abstract of Scientific Reports paper*
Strongly correlated phases exhibit collective carrier dynamics that if
properly harnessed can enable novel functionalities and applications. In
this article, we investigate the phenomenon of electrical oscillations in a
prototypical MIT system, vanadium dioxide (VO2). We show that the key to
such oscillatory behaviour is the ability to induce and stabilize a
non-hysteretic and spontaneously reversible phase transition using a
negative feedback mechanism. Further, we investigate the synchronization
and coupling dynamics of such VO2 based relaxation oscillators and show,
via experiment and simulation, that this coupled oscillator system exhibits
rich non-linear dynamics including charge oscillations that are
synchronized in both frequency and phase. Our approach of harnessing a
non-hysteretic reversible phase transition region is applicable to other
correlated systems exhibiting metal-insulator transitions and can be a
potential candidate for oscillator based non-Boolean computing.
references:
- Nikhil Shukla et al., Synchronized charge oscillations in
correlated electron systems, *Scientific Reports*, 2014, DOI:
10.1038/srep04964 (open
access)<http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140514/srep04964/full/srep04964.html>
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