PLoS ONE (Jan 2015)

Ultra-fast data-mining hardware architecture based on stochastic computing.

  • Antoni Morro,
  • Vincent Canals,
  • Antoni Oliver,
  • Miquel L Alomar,
  • Josep L Rossello

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124176
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 5
p. e0124176

Abstract

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Minimal hardware implementations able to cope with the processing of large amounts of data in reasonable times are highly desired in our information-driven society. In this work we review the application of stochastic computing to probabilistic-based pattern-recognition analysis of huge database sets. The proposed technique consists in the hardware implementation of a parallel architecture implementing a similarity search of data with respect to different pre-stored categories. We design pulse-based stochastic-logic blocks to obtain an efficient pattern recognition system. The proposed architecture speeds up the screening process of huge databases by a factor of 7 when compared to a conventional digital implementation using the same hardware area.