Memristive memory processing unit (MPU) controller for in-memory processing

Modern computers suffer from a growing disparity of speed between processor and memory which significantly limits their performance. Additionally, as the number of transistors per chip continues to increase, the operating frequency stabilizes due to the power considerations. One of the leading solutions to these issues is to reduce data transfer by adding processing capabilities into the memory itself. For data-intensive applications, this means a significant improvement in processing capabilities by saving a significant amount of time and energy. Although all the attempts to implement this solution so far were unsuccessful, emerging nonvolatile resistive memory technologies (namely, memristors) offer an opportunity for developing a Memory Processing Unit (MPU) based on a technique called 'stateful logic'. The MPU allows adding processing capabilities to the memristive memory cells, thus enabling novel non-von Neumann architectures. The processing within the MPU relies on a sequence of logical operations. This paper presents the design of an MPU controller for executing in-memory computation. Different design techniques to execute processing and storing data within the MPU are described. The MPU controller has been designed and implemented in a VHDL environment and used to execute different operations within the MPU.