Random Dynamical Network Automata for Nanoelectronics

Abstract

It is generally expected that future and emerging nanoscale computing devices will be built in a bottom-up way from vast numbers of simple, densely arranged components that exhibit high failure rates, are relatively slow, and connected in an unstructured way. Other than that, there is little to no consensus on what type of technology and computing architecture holds most promises to go far beyond today’s top-down engineered silicon devices. Highly structured crossbar-like and cellular automata architectures have been proposed as possible alternatives to the von Neumann computing architecture, which is not generally well suited for emerging, massively parallel and fine-grained nanoscale electronics. While the top-down engineered semi-conducting technology favors regular and locally interconnected structures, emerging bottom-up self-assembled devices tend to have to be unstructured and heterogeneous because of the current lack of precise control over these processes. In this paper, we survey and assess two types of random dynamical networks, namely Random Boolean Networks (RBNs) and Random Threshold Networks (RTNs), as candidates for alternative computing architectures and models for future nanoscale information processing devices. In a high-level approach that is based on previous work, we illustrate that they have the potential to offer superior properties over highly structured crossbar- or mesh-like cellular automata architectures, such as an inherent and scale-invariant robustness, more efficient communication capabilities, manufacturing benefits for bottom-up self-assembled devices, and the ability to learn and solve tasks successfully. We also show that RBNs can learn and generalize. Our investigation is driven by the need for alternative computing and manufacturing paradigms to mitigate some of the challenges traditional approaches face.