TY - GEN
T1 - X-MAGIC
T2 - 28th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, VLSI-SOC 2020
AU - Peled, Natan
AU - Ben-Hur, Rotem
AU - Ronen, Ronny
AU - Kvatinsky, Shahar
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 IEEE.
PY - 2020/10/5
Y1 - 2020/10/5
N2 - Processing-in-memory (PIM) using memristive technologies is an attractive solution for the memory wall problem. PIM can improve the performance and energy efficiency of computing systems by reducing the data transfer between the memory and the processor. Memristor Aided loGIC (MAGIC) is a popular memristive PIM technique that can perform any combinational logic as a sequence of atomic NOR/NOT operations. These NOR/NOT operations rely on initializing their output cell prior to computation. In this paper, we explore input overwriting: The use of the MAGIC gate output cell as an additional input without initializing it. We extend MAGIC and introduce X-MAGIC (eXtended MAGIC) which uses input overwriting, and demonstrate it by two gates, $A\cdot(\overline{B+C})$ and $A. \overline{B}$, where $A$ is an overwritten input. We show that input overwriting improves functionality, performance, and effective lifetime of the system. Due to algorithmic difficulties, available PIM synthesis tools do not support input overwriting. We address these difficulties by modifying an existing synthesis tool for MAGIC (SIMPLER), and presenting several general principles and methods for supporting input overwriting. We examine two configurations of the modified synthesis tool using X-MAGIC gates, differing in their performance/area trade-off. Both configurations achieve a geomean improvement of over 16.5% in performance, and over 20% in effective lifetime compared to standard MAGIC. Due to algorithmic difficulties, available PIM synthesis tools do not support input overwriting. We address these difficulties by modifying an existing synthesis tool for MAGIC (SIMPLER), and presenting several general principles and methods for supporting input overwriting. We examine two configurations of the modified synthesis tool using X-MAGIC gates, differing in their performance/area trade-off. Both configurations achieve a geomean improvement of over 16.5% in performance, and over 20% in effective lifetime compared to standard MAGIC.
AB - Processing-in-memory (PIM) using memristive technologies is an attractive solution for the memory wall problem. PIM can improve the performance and energy efficiency of computing systems by reducing the data transfer between the memory and the processor. Memristor Aided loGIC (MAGIC) is a popular memristive PIM technique that can perform any combinational logic as a sequence of atomic NOR/NOT operations. These NOR/NOT operations rely on initializing their output cell prior to computation. In this paper, we explore input overwriting: The use of the MAGIC gate output cell as an additional input without initializing it. We extend MAGIC and introduce X-MAGIC (eXtended MAGIC) which uses input overwriting, and demonstrate it by two gates, $A\cdot(\overline{B+C})$ and $A. \overline{B}$, where $A$ is an overwritten input. We show that input overwriting improves functionality, performance, and effective lifetime of the system. Due to algorithmic difficulties, available PIM synthesis tools do not support input overwriting. We address these difficulties by modifying an existing synthesis tool for MAGIC (SIMPLER), and presenting several general principles and methods for supporting input overwriting. We examine two configurations of the modified synthesis tool using X-MAGIC gates, differing in their performance/area trade-off. Both configurations achieve a geomean improvement of over 16.5% in performance, and over 20% in effective lifetime compared to standard MAGIC. Due to algorithmic difficulties, available PIM synthesis tools do not support input overwriting. We address these difficulties by modifying an existing synthesis tool for MAGIC (SIMPLER), and presenting several general principles and methods for supporting input overwriting. We examine two configurations of the modified synthesis tool using X-MAGIC gates, differing in their performance/area trade-off. Both configurations achieve a geomean improvement of over 16.5% in performance, and over 20% in effective lifetime compared to standard MAGIC.
KW - PIM
KW - logic synthesis
KW - memory
KW - memristor
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101120118&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/VLSI-SOC46417.2020.9344095
DO - 10.1109/VLSI-SOC46417.2020.9344095
M3 - Conference contribution
T3 - IEEE/IFIP International Conference on VLSI and System-on-Chip, VLSI-SoC
SP - 64
EP - 69
BT - 2020 IFIP/IEEE 28th International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, VLSI-SOC 2020
Y2 - 5 October 2020 through 7 October 2020
ER -
