Neural n-port voltage comparator network

Use is made of a neural architecture to realise a low-offset VLSI implementation of an n-port voltage comparator that performs the winner-take-all function. The circuit has a wide resolution (~50 dB), high gain, and a Hopfield-like positive feedback interconnect matrix, making possible the detection of very small perturbations (<10 mV). The circuit is suitable for applications in Hamming and neural networks, vector quantisers, and other analogue parallel signal processing systems. The performance of the network was measured on a 32 input 2.0 μm CMOS circuit