title: Exploring Liquid Computing in a Hardware Adaptation : Construction and Operation of a Neural Network Experiment
creator: Schürmann, Felix
subject: 530
subject: 530 Physics
description: Future increases in computing power strongly rely on miniaturization, large scale integration, and parallelization. Yet, approaching the nanometer realm poses new challenges in terms of device reliability, power dissipation, and connectivity - issues that have been of lesser concern in today's prevailing microprocessor implementations. It is therefore necessary to pursue the research on alternative computing architectures and strategies that can make use of large numbers of unreliable devices and only have a moderate power consumption. This thesis describes the construction of an experiment dedicated to exploring silicon adaptations of artificial neural network paradigms for their general applicability, power efficiency, and fault-tolerance. The presented setup comprises peripheral electronics, programmable logic, and software to accommodate a mixed-signal CMOS microchip implementing a flexible perceptron with 256 McCulloch-Pitts neurons. This neural network experiment is used to explore a recent strategy that allows to access the power of recurrent network topologies. While it has been conjectured that this liquid computing is suited for hardware implementations, this first time adaptation to a CMOS neural network affirms this claim. Not only feasibility but also tolerance to substrate variations and robustness to faults during operation are demonstrated.
date: 2005
type: Dissertation
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/5615/1/promo_schuermann.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00005615
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-56156
identifier:   Schürmann, Felix  (2005) Exploring Liquid Computing in a Hardware Adaptation : Construction and Operation of a Neural Network Experiment.  [Dissertation]     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/5615/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng