Interconnect networks for resistive computing architectures

Abstract

Today's computing systems suffer from a memory/communication bottleneck, resulting in high energy consumption and saturated performance. This makes them inefficient in solving data-intensive applications at reasonable cost. Computation-In-Memory (CIM) architecture, based on the integration of storage and computation in the same physical location using non-volatile memristor crossbar technology, offers a potential solution to the memory bottleneck. An efficient interconnect network is essential to maximize CIM's architectural performance. This paper presents three interconnect network schemes for CIM architecture; these are (1) CMOS-based, (2) memristor-based and (3) hybrid cmos/memristor interconnect network scheme. To illustrate the feasibility of such schemes, a CIM parallel adder is used as a case study. The results show that the hybrid interconnect network scheme achieves a higher performance in comparison with the CMOS-based and memristor-based interconnect scheme in terms of delay, energy and area.