Title
An event-based architecture for solving constraint satisfaction problems
Abstract
Constraint satisfaction problems are ubiquitous in many domains. They are typically solved using conventional digital computing architectures that do not reflect the distributed nature of many of these problems, and are thus ill-suited for solving them. Here we present a parallel analogue/digital hardware architecture specifically designed to solve such problems. We cast constraint satisfaction problems as networks of stereotyped nodes that communicate using digital pulses, or events. Each node contains an oscillator implemented using analogue circuits. The non-repeating phase relations among the oscillators drive the exploration of the solution space. We show that this hardware architecture can yield state-of-the-art performance on random SAT problems under reasonable assumptions on the implementation. We present measurements from a prototype electronic chip to demonstrate that a physical implementation of the proposed architecture is robust to practical non-idealities and to validate the theory proposed.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1038/ncomms9941
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Field
DocType
Volume
Analogue circuits,Architecture,Biology,Chip,Constraint satisfaction problem,Bioinformatics,Genetics,Backtracking,Computer engineering,Hardware architecture
Journal
6
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2041-1723
6
0.55
References 
Authors
12
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mostafa, Hesham11088.38
Lorenz. K. Müller2295.27
Giacomo Indiveri31460148.21