Stigmergic search with Single Electron Tunneling technology based Memory Enhanced Hubs

Abstract

Fluctuations have recently been recognized as powerful resources that can be exploited to drive computations, but their use has mostly been limited to logic circuits. This paper goes further and explores a more general framework, in which computation is modeled as a process with a multitude of fluctuating tokens that interact with each other directly or via stigmergy. For the implementation of these concepts Single Electron Tunneling (SET) technology is a strong candidate, since it combines a key element of fluctuation-driven systems, i.e., fluctuating tokens, with the potential for manufacturing in traditional materials (silicon) as well as alternatives, such as molecules. We propose computational elements, i.e., Memory Enhanced Hubs (MEHs), that contain functionality to pass fluctuating signals through them, as well as stigmergic functionality to store a state temporarily and reset it. We introduce a SET based design of such a memory enhance hub instance and demonstrate by means of simulations that it function correctly and that MEHs networks operating according to the stigmergic paradigm can be constructed.