The present application relates to semiconductor technology. More particularly, the present application relates to a semiconductor structure that contains a non-volatile battery which controls gate bias, which structure may be used in neuromorphic computing.
Neuromorphic technology aims to mimic the neural network architecture of a human brain. The origins of the technology date back to the late 1980s. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in neuromorphic engineering. The foundational premise of the brain-like chip is to replicate the morphology of individual neurons and to build artificial neural systems. The ultimate goal is to create a computer which replicates some of the fundamental characteristics of the human brain.
While the neuroscientific study of the human brain is nowhere near finalized, work is ongoing to realize the brain-computer analogy. Although neuroscience has yet to grasp fully all the intricacies of the human brain, neuromorphic engineers are aiming to design a computer which presents three of the characteristics of the brain that are known to date: lower power consumption (human brains use less energy but are nevertheless immensely complex), fault intolerance (brains lose neurons and are still able to function, whereas microprocessors can be affected by the loss of one transistor) and no need to be programmed (unlike computers, brains are able to learn and respond spontaneously to signals from the environment).
Advances in neuromorphic computing are thus needed in order to design a computer that has the characteristics of a human brain.