Towards Nanocomputer Architecture

Beckett, P. and Jennings, A.

At the nanometer scale, the focus of micro-architecture will move from processing to communication. Most general computer architectures to date have been based on a 'stored program' paradigm that differentiates between memory and processing and relies on communication over busses and other (relatively) long distance mechanisms. Nanometer-scale electronics - nanoelectronics - promises to fundamentally change the ground-rules. Processing will be cheap and plentiful, interconnection expensive but pervasive. This will tend to move computer architecture in the direction of locally connected, reconfigurable hardware meshes that merge processing and memory. If the overheads associated with reconfigurability can be reduced or even eliminated, architectures based on non-volatile, reconfigurable, finegrained meshes with rich, local interconnect offer a better match to the expected characteristics of future nanoelectronic devices.

Cite as: Beckett, P. and Jennings, A. (2002). Towards Nanocomputer Architecture. In Proc. Seventh Asia-Pacific Computer Systems Architectures Conference (ACSAC2002), Melbourne, Australia. CRPIT, 6. Lai, F. and Morris, J., Eds. ACS. 141-150.

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