An intelligent MOS transistor featuring gate-level weighted sum and threshold operations

A novel functional MOS transistor which behaves much more intelligently than a mere switching device has been developed. The device has a floating gate whose potential is controlled by a plural number of input gates via capacitive coupling. The transistor is called a ´neuron MOSFET´ due to its similarity to biological neurons in that the transistor turns on when the weighted sum of all input signals exceeds a certain threshold value. Test devices were fabricated using a double-polysilicon NMOS process. The analysis of the basic device operation and its experimental verification are presented. A number of interesting applications of the neuron MOSFET are described which include a variable threshold transistor, a neuron circuit, a single-gate D/A (digital-to-analog) converter, and a soft hardware logic circuit.<>