Look-ahead mapping of Boolean functions in memristive crossbar array

Abstract

Memristors have drawn the attention of researchers due to their unique non-volatile and logic design capabilities. Combining these two, a concept called in-memory computing has emerged, wherein the same memory unit is used for both storage and computation, which helps in overcoming the CPU-memory bottleneck in conventional processor architectures. In this paper, we propose a look-ahead strategy for Boolean functions using Memristor Aided LoGIC (MAGIC) design style in the memristive crossbar, which supports in-memory computing. First, the Boolean function is converted into a netlist of NOT and NOR gates using a logic synthesis tool. The proposed crossbar mapping tool then maps the gate netlist to the crossbar, and also generates the micro-operations needed to execute the gate operations. Experimental evaluation on ISCAS′85 benchmarks reports average improvements of 37.02%, 36.55%, 64.99% and 35.55% respectively in terms of memristor count, latency, crossbar size, and energy over a recently published work. Results were also reported for IWLS-2005 benchmarks.