| Research Abstract |
Integrated circuits are usually called hardware because their functions cannot be altered once they were built on silicon. The purpose of this research is to develop a new Soft Hardware which can arbitrarily change its function by external control signals. Based on such new circuit concept, we have established the foundations for new architecture computers that can perform very flexible information processing.
A high-functionality transistor called Neuron MOSFET(vMOS) which we invented and developed has allowed us to explore such new-concept circuits. Several test circuits were fabricated using double-polysilicon CMOS process and the concepts have been experimentally verified. It has been demonstrated that two-input and three-input soft-hardware logic circuits can change their logic functions such as OR, AND, EXOR, EXNOR, INHIBIT, MAJORITY VOTER etc. in real time according to the external control signals. A real-time data matching circuit having real-time variable window has been also d
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eveloped using only 10 transistors. Such circuit blocks serve as key elements to build intellignet data processing systems.
In addition, a hardware search engine has been developed also using vMOS circuitry. The hardware can find out the most similar data in a memory cell array without any software manipulation. In conventional circuits, the search for the most similar requires very time-consuming sequential data-to-data comparisons. In vMOS circuitry, however, search is performed in a fully parallel manner on hardware, thus achieving minimum latency. An intelligent memory technology has been developed also based on vMOS soft-hardware circuitry. We have developed a static memory that quantizes the incoming data into multivalued format, memorizes the data, and classifies them into various formats all at each memory cell level. A dynamic memory that memorizes an analog or multivalued data and performs an association with succeeding input data has been developed. When these memories are merged into the search engine, a new architecture for intelligent information processing systems is going to be established. Less
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