PATH: Evaluation of Boolean Logic Using Path-Based In-Memory Computing Systems
Article
Thijssen, S, Rashed, MRH, Jha, SK et al. (2023). PATH: Evaluation of Boolean Logic Using Path-Based In-Memory Computing Systems
. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, 10.1109/TCAD.2023.3344523
Thijssen, S, Rashed, MRH, Jha, SK et al. (2023). PATH: Evaluation of Boolean Logic Using Path-Based In-Memory Computing Systems
. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, 10.1109/TCAD.2023.3344523
In-memory computing using non-volatile memory is a promising pathway to accelerate data-intensive applications. While substantial research efforts have been dedicated to executing Boolean logic using digital in-memory computing, the limitation of state-of-the-art paradigms is that they heavily rely on repeatedly switching the state of the non-volatile resistive devices using expensive WRITE operations. In this paper, we propose a new in-memory computing paradigm called path-based computing for evaluating Boolean logic. Computation within the paradigm is performed using a one-time expensive compilation phase and a fast and efficient evaluation phase. The key property of the paradigm is that the execution phase only involves cheap READ operations. First, we define an analogy between binary decision diagrams (BDDs) and one-transistor one-memristor (1T1M) crossbars that allows Boolean functions to be mapped into crossbar designs. When such crossbar design becomes too large to be physically realizable, we propose to synthesize the Boolean function into a path-based computing system. A path-based computing system consists of a topology of staircase structures. A staircase structure is a cascade of hardwired crossbars, which minimizes inter-crossbar communication. We evaluate the proposed paradigm using ten circuits from the Revlib benchmark suite, eight control circuits of the EPFL benchmark suite, and eight ISCAS85 benchmarks. Compared with state-of-the-art digital in-memory computing paradigms, path-based computing improves energy and latency with 1006× and 10× on average, respectively.
