Memcomputing: The cape of good hope: [Extended special session description]

Abstract

Energy efficiency has emerged as a major barrier to performance scalability for modern processors. On the other hand, significant breakthroughs have been achieved in memory technologies recently [1-4, 6]. As such, the fascinating idea of memcomputing (i.e., use memory for computation purposes) has drawn wide attention from both academia and industry as an effective remedy. Compared with conventional logic computing, memory array provides large set of parallel resources with high bandwidth, which can be configured to perform in-situ computing and information processing, leading to drastic reduction in processor-memory traffic. It will not only make computations more power-and speed-efficient, but also smarter. In addition, it exploits the advances in memory technologies (e.g., [8, 9]) and integration approaches (e.g. 3D integration [11-17]) to achieve better technology scalability. This special session includes three presentations that offer a broad-spectrum retreat on this hot topic.