The MMU Implementation of Unity-1 Microprocessor

Virtual memory management is always a very essential issue of the modern microprocessor design. A memory management unit (MMU) is designed to implement a virtual machine for user programs, and provides a management mechanism between the operating system and user programs. This paper analyzes the tradeoffs considered in the MMU design of Unity 11 CPU of Peking University, and introduces in detail the solution of pure hardware table walking with two level page table organization. The implementation takes care of required operations and high performances needed by modern operating systems and low costs needed by embedded systems. This solution has been silicon proven, and successfully porting the Linux 2.4.17 kernel, the XWindow system, GNOME and most application software onto the Unity platform.

LMI-based approach for global asymptotic stability analysis of continuous BAM neural networks

Studies on the stability of the equilibrium points of continuous bidirectional associative memory (BAM) neural network have yielded many useful results. A novel neural network model called standard neural network model (SNNM) is ad- vanced. By using state affine transformation, the BAM neural networks were converted to SNNMs. Some sufficient conditions for the global asymptotic stability of continuous BAM neural networks were derived from studies on the SNNMs’ stability. These conditions were formulated as easily verifiable linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), whose conservativeness is relatively low. The approach proposed extends the known stability results, and can also be applied to other forms of recurrent neural networks (RNNs).

Behavioral interventions to eliminate fear responses

Fear memory underlies anxiety-related disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD). PTSD is a fear-based disorder,characterized by difficulties in extinguishing the learned fear response and maintaining extinction. Currently, the first-line treatment for PTSD is exposure therapy, which forms an extinction memory to compete with the original fear memory. However,the extinguished fear often returns under numerous circumstances, suggesting that novel methods are needed to eliminate fear memory or facilitate extinction memory. This review discusses research that targeted extinction and reconsolidation to manipulate fear memory. Recent studies indicate that sleep is an active state that can regulate memory processes. We also discuss the influence of sleep on fear memory. For each manipulation, we briefly summarize the neural mechanisms that have been identified in human studies. Finally, we highlight potential limitations and future directions in the field to better translate existing interventions to clinical settings.

Enhancing security of NVM-based main memory with dynamic Feistel network mapping

As promising alternatives in building future main memory systems, emerging non-volatile memory(NVM) technologies can increase memory capacity in a cost-effective and power-efficient way. However, NVM is facing security threats due to its limited write endurance: a malicious adversary can wear out the cells and cause the NVM system to fail quickly. To address this issue, several wear-leveling schemes have been proposed to evenly distribute write traffic in a security-aware manner. In this study, we present a new type of timing attack, remapping timing attack(RTA), based on information leakage from the remapping latency difference in NVM. Our analysis and experimental results show that RTA can cause three of the latest wear-leveling schemes(i.e., region-based start-gap,security refresh, and multi-way wear leveling) to lose their effectiveness in several days(even minutes), causing failure of NVM. To defend against such an attack, we further propose a novel wear-leveling scheme called the ‘security region-based start-gap(security RBSG)', which is a two-stage strategy using a dynamic Feistel network to enhance the simple start-gap wear leveling with level-adjustable security assurance. The theoretical analysis and evaluation results show that the proposed security RBSG not only performs well when facing traditional malicious attacks, but also better defends against RTA.