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Date Available

3-22-2011

Year of Publication

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE)

College

Engineering

Department/School/Program

Electrical Engineering

Faculty

Henry G. Dietz, Ph.D.

Faculty

Ingrid St. Omer, Ph.D.

Abstract

Many new fabrication technologies, from nanotechnology and MEMS to printed organic semiconductors, center on constructing arrays of large numbers of sensors, actuators, or other devices on a single substrate. The utility of such an array could be greatly enhanced if each device could be managed by a programmable controller and all of these controllers could coordinate their actions as a massively-parallel computer. Kentucky Architecture nanocontroller array with very low per controller circuit complexity can provide efficient control of nanotechnology devices.

This thesis provides a detailed description of the control hierarchy of a digital system needed to build "nanocontrollers" suitable for controlling millions of devices on a single chip. A Verilog design and FPGA prototype of a nanocontroller system is provided to meet the constraints associated with a massively-parallel programmable controller system.

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