Exploration of Edge of Chaos in Bio-Inspired Devices, Circuits, and Systems

Abstract

With Moore's era approaching an inevitable end, much research is currently focused on multi-purpose nano-devices, which may endow traditional purely-CMOS circuits with add-on functionalities, allowing to boost the performance of integrated circuits, despite further reductions in transistor dimensions shall no longer be viable. One of the most promising nanotechnologies for fostering progress in electronics in the years to come allows to fabricate memristors, which, depending upon their constitutive materials, may pave the way toward the circuit realisation of disruptive in-memory computing or mem-computing paradigms of great appeal to the Internet-of- Things industry. Moreover, with their extraordinary capability to capture the rich dynamics of neural structures, memristors shall play a key role in the development of miniaturised hardware systems operating according to principles similar to the mechanisms underlying the functionalities of the human brain. In this regard this work sheds light into the conditions, under which electronic systems, leveraging the locally-active behaviour of a NbO device stack, may enter a particular operating regime, hosting the seed for complexity, and referred to as Edge of Chaos, similarly as axon membranes on the verge to generate all-or-none spikes, which, travelling across neural structures, enable the development of intelligence in human beings.