In memory computation using quantum-dot cellular automata

Abstract

The conventional computing system has been facing enormous pressure to cope with the uprising demand for computing speed in today's world. In search of high-speed computing in the nano-scale era, it becomes the utmost necessity to explore a viable alternative to overcome the challenges of the physical limit of complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS). Towards that direction, the processing-in-memory (PIM) is advancing its importance as it keeps the computation as adjacent as possible to memory. It promises to outperform the latencies of the conventional stored-program concept by embedding storage and data computation in a single unit. On the other hand, the bit storing and processing capability of Akers array provides the foundation of PIM. Again, quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) emerges as a promising nanoelectronic to put back CMOS to give fast-paced devices at the nanoelectronics era. This work presents a novel PIM concept, embedding Akers array in QCA to achieve high-speed computing at the nano-scale era. QCA implementation of universal logic utilizing Akers array signifies its processing power and puts forth its potentials. A universal function is considered for testing the effectiveness of the proposed PIM cell. The performance evaluation indicates the efficacy of QCA PIM over the conventional Von Neumann architecture.