Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos for Fleixble, Reconfigurable Computing

Nonlinear dynamics and chaos contribute flexibility and rich, complex behavior to nonlinear systems. Transistors and transistor circuits are inherently nonlinear. It was demonstrated that this nonlinearity and the flexibility that comes with it can be utilized to implement flexible, reconfigurable computing, and such approaches are called Nonlinear Dynamics-Based Computing. In nonlinear dynamics-based computing, a very same circuit can be reprogrammed to implement and perform many different types of computations, thereby increasing the amount of computing that can be obtained per transistor. For example, at the gate level, the same transistor circuit can implement all different logical gates, such as AND gate or XOR gate. Or at the system level, the same transistor circuit can implement a variety of different higher-level functions, such as addition or subtraction. Another remarkable feature of nonlinear dynamics-based computing is that because different types of functions or operations coexist within the dynamics of the circuit, reprograming and reconfiguring is nearly instant. A recently fabricated VLSI chip for nonlinear dynamics-based computing was shown to be capable of implementing a new function in each clock cycle, with no need for separate reprograming time in between clock cycles. In this paper we briefly review this new approach to computing, present some of our latest results, discuss the implications and possible advantages of nonlinear dynamics-based computing, and plot potential horizons for this exciting new approach to computing.