Field-Programmable Crossbar Array (FPCA) for Reconfigurable Computing

For decades, advances in electronics were directly related to the scaling of CMOS transistors according to Moore’s law. However, both the CMOS scaling and the classical computer architecture are approaching fundamental and practical limits, and new computing architectures based on emerging devices, such as non-volatile memories e.g. resistive memory (RRAM) devices, are expected to sustain the exponential growth of computing capability. Here we propose a novel memory-centric, reconfigurable, general purpose computing platform to handle the exploding amount of data in a fast and energy-efficient manner. The proposed computing architecture is based on a single physical resistive memory-centric fabric that can be optimally reconfigured and utilized to perform different computing and data storage tasks in a massively parallel approach. The system can be tailored to achieve maximal energy efficiency based on the data flow by dynamically allocating the basic computing fabric to storage, arithmetic, and analog including neuromorphic computing tasks.