Abstract
Improvements to the performance of conventional computers have mainly been achieved through semiconductor scaling; however, scaling is reaching its limitations. Natural phenomena, such as quantum superposition and stochastic resonance, have been introduced into new computing paradigms to improve performance beyond these limitations. Here, we explain that the uncertain behaviours of devices due to semiconductor scaling can improve the performance of computers. We prototyped an integrated circuit by performing a ground-state search of the Ising model. The bit errors of memory cell devices holding the current state of search occur probabilistically by inserting fluctuations into dynamic device characteristics, which will be actualised in the future to the chip. As a result, we observed more improvements in solution accuracy than that without fluctuations. Although the uncertain behaviours of devices had been intended to be eliminated in conventional devices, we demonstrate that uncertain behaviours has become the key to improving computational performance.
Highlights
Improvements to the performance of conventional computers have mainly been achieved through semiconductor scaling; scaling is reaching its limitations
The performance of von Neumann-architecture computers has mainly been improved through semiconductor scaling[1]
We carried out an experiment on the ground-state search of the Ising model by using a memory cell array with uncertainty that was implemented as a single silicon integrated circuit
Summary
Improvements to the performance of conventional computers have mainly been achieved through semiconductor scaling; scaling is reaching its limitations. We explain that the uncertain behaviours of devices due to semiconductor scaling can improve the performance of computers. We prototyped an integrated circuit by performing a ground-state search of the Ising model. Hardware implementations analogous to the Ising model have been proposed and can achieve approximate solutions[15,16,17,18,19]. Computerised devices will exhibit uncertain behaviours due to semiconductor scaling The cost, both in money and hardware resources, will be need to be increased to guarantee accurate behaviours in the near future. We carried out an experiment on the ground-state search of the Ising model by using a memory cell array with uncertainty that was implemented as a single silicon integrated circuit. We found that the uncertain behaviours of the hardware became usable as part of the algorithm
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