Architectural impacts of emerging transistors

At present there is much effort to determine if emerging information processing devices could have a positive impact on the performance of non-Boolean/non-von Neumann computer architectures. We explore this topic here by specifically considering how emerging transistor technologies might impact cellular neural networks (CNNs). For CNNs, prior work suggests that new transistor structures could be employed to better facilitate non-binary outputs - that in turn reduce the number of template/programming operations as well as the hardware paths needed to solve a given problem. Here, we present analysis that considers how the above approach could impact the performance/energy of the cells that comprise the CNN. We also consider how characteristics of other emerging transistor technologies could positively impact CNNs - particularly with respect to reduced program complexity.