• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.257-271
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• 2010

As the end of photolithographic integration era is approaching fast, numerous nanoscale devices and systems based on novel nanoscale materials and assembly techniques are recently emerging. Notably, various reconfigurable architectures with considerable promise have been proposed based on nanowire crossbar structure as the primitive building block. Unfortunately, high-density sys-tems consisting of nanometer-scale elements are likely to have numerous physical imperfections and variations. Therefore, defect-tolerance is considered as one of the most exigent challenges in nanowire crossbar systems. In this work, three different defect-avoidant logic mapping algorithms to circumvent defective crosspoints in nanowire reconfigurable crossbar systems are evaluated in terms of various performance metrics. Then, a novel method to find the most cost-effective repair solution is demonstrated by considering all major repair parameters and quantitatively estimating the performance and cost-effectiveness of each algorithm. Extensive parametric simulation results are reported to compare overall repair costs of the repair algorithms under consideration and to validate the cost-driven repair optimization technique.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.209-218
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• 2012

Recently, the Field Programmable Stateful Logic Array (FPSLA) was proposed as one of the most promising system integration technologies which will extend the life of the Moore's law. This work is the first proposal of the FPSLA design automation flow, and the approaches to logic synthesis, synchronization, physical mapping, and automatic placement of the FPSLA designs. The synchronization at each gate for pipelining determines the x-coordinates of cells, and reduces the placement to 1-dimensional problems. The objective function and its gradients for the non-linear optimization of the net length and placement density have been remodeled for the reduced global placement problem. Also, a recursive algorithm has been proposed to legalize the placement by relaxing the density overflow of bipartite bin groups in a top-down hierarchical fashion. The proposed model and algorithm are implemented, and validated by applying them to the ACM/SIGDA benchmark designs. The output state of a gate in an FPSLA needs to be duplicated so that each fanout gate can be connected to a dedicated copy. This property has been taken into account by merging the duplicated nets into a hyperedge, and then, splitting the hyperedge into edges as the optimization progresses. This yields additional 18.4% of the cell count reduction in the most dense logic stage. The practicality of the FPSLA can be further enhanced primarily by incorporating into the logic synthesis the constraint to avoid the concentrated fains of gates on some logic stages. In addition, an efficient algorithm needs to be devised for the routing problem which is based on a complicated graph. The graph models the nanowire crossbar which is trimmed to be embedded into the FPSLA fabric, and therefore, asymmetric. These CAD tools can be used to evaluate the fabric efficiency during the architecture enhancement as well as automate the design.