TY - GEN
T1 - On axon-inspired communications
AU - Beiu, Valeriu
AU - Ibrahim, Walid
AU - Beg, Azam
AU - Zhang, Liren
AU - Tache, Mihai
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - 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 RC-delays 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.
AB - 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 RC-delays 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.
KW - Action potential
KW - axon
KW - communication
KW - ion channel
KW - power
KW - single electron technology (SET)
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80155148011&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=80155148011&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ECCTD.2011.6043841
DO - 10.1109/ECCTD.2011.6043841
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:80155148011
SN - 9781457706189
T3 - 2011 20th European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design, ECCTD 2011
SP - 789
EP - 792
BT - 2011 20th European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design, ECCTD 2011
T2 - 2011 20th European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design, ECCTD 2011
Y2 - 29 August 2011 through 31 August 2011
ER -