Comparing crossbar-based nano/CMOS architectures

Abstract

During the last few years, a novel set of nanoscale technologies has emerged as an alternative to traditional CMOS circuits. They bring certain promises such as high-density, reduced manufacturing costs, but they also present some challenges. Trying to compare some of the proposed architectures we realized that it is impossible to objectively evaluate them, problem that hinder our ability to practically develop these architectures. To compare these architectures we extracted the similarities between these fabrics and based on these similarities we tried to match the results presented in the literature. Following this methodology we were unable to objectively compare these emergent architectures. In this paper we present the main reasons why such an evaluation is not practical and we show how a common vocabulary and design methodology can solve this problem.