The Dolphin.MSB chip of the NEUROTEC II project arrived
The DOLPHIN chips (Device-Optimized Low-Power Hardware Interface) are a series of small scale chips to test the interfacing to memristors as novel computing devices to be integrated into CMOS chips. With memristors, a new class of computing is investigated, potentially speeding up edge AI applications by integrating computing and memory rather than keeping it separate. However, memristors as non-volatile memory elements are not yet integrated in the standard CMOS libraries, hence their interfacing requires investigation.
The Dolphin.MSB chip is to investigate the mixed-signal block that interfaces the memristor. It contains the core analog and mixed-signal circuits that provide stable voltages and measure accurate currents which is used to program the memristor and infer values for computing. It will provide valuable insights towards a larger demonstrator to come later in this project timeframe.
In the next weeks, our colleagues in the laboratory will focus on measuring and characterizing this chip to understand it’s behavior in all details.
