Printed Computing: Enabling Extremely Low Cost Pervasive Near Sensor Computing

Introduction

A large number of important domains - such as fast-moving consumer goods and personalized medicine - have still not seen the benefits of computing, mainly due to high production costs of rigid silicon technologies. Printed electronics based on additive manufacturing processes hold promise of meeting cost and conformity needs of such applications.

Challenges of Traditional Architectures

However, the realization of traditional digital processor architectures is infeasible due to constraints of low-cost manufacturing, such as:

1. Form factor
2. Low device count
3. Large feature sizes
4. High variations

The fundamental research question, hence, is how to perform accurate, reliable, and energy-efficient classification computing to meet target applications’ requirements within the constraints of additive printed manufacturing.

Aim of PRICOM

The aim of PRICOM is to make breakthroughs by developing unconventional mixed-signal classifier computing paradigms together with their hardware realization and mapping based on additive printing technologies. This enables:

• Significant reduction of the hardware footprint
• Direct processing of analog sensory inputs
• Achievement of high classification accuracy

Challenges in Analog Computing

Nevertheless, it is a major challenge as analog computing is very sensitive to variations, and at the same time, additive manufacturing is inherently prone to printing variations.

Proposed Solutions

I aim at closing this gap by:

1. Utilizing the inherent tolerance of neuromorphic computing to variations with special hardware primitive design and training algorithms
2. Designing novel variation-aware physical design algorithms
3. Developing an iterative tuning flow exploiting unique features of additive manufacturing

Feasibility and Impact

The feasibility of multi-disciplinary research of PRICOM is underpinned by my unique cross-layer expertise and will be tested by fabrication-based demonstration of printed computing systems.

PRICOM can enable the proliferation of computing in the consumer market and personalized medicine, bringing economical gains and improving quality of life.