Title :
Reduction and IR-drop compensations techniques for reliable neuromorphic computing systems
Author :
Beiye Liu ; Hai Li ; Yiran Chen ; Xin Li ; Tingwen Huang ; Qing Wu ; Barnell, Mark
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Abstract :
Neuromorphic computing system (NCS) is a promising architecture to combat the well-known memory bottleneck in Von Neumann architecture. The recent breakthrough on memristor devices made an important step toward realizing a low-power, small-footprint NCS on-a-chip. However, the currently low manufacturing reliability of nano-devices and the voltage IR-drop along metal wires and memristors arrays severely limits the scale of memristor crossbar based NCS and hinders the design scalability. In this work, we propose a novel system reduction scheme that significantly lowers the required dimension of the memristor crossbars in NCS while maintaining high computing accuracy. An IR-drop compensation technique is also proposed to overcome the adverse impacts of the wire resistance and the sneak-path problem in large memristor crossbar designs. Our simulation results show that the proposed techniques can improve computing accuracy by 27.0% and 38.7% less circuit area compared to the original NCS design.
Keywords :
integrated circuit design; integrated circuit reliability; low-power electronics; memristor circuits; nanoelectronics; neural chips; IR-drop compensation technique; Von Neumann architecture; design scalability; high computing accuracy; low manufacturing reliability; low-power small-footprint NCS on-a-chip; memory bottleneck; memristor crossbar designs; memristor devices; memristors arrays; metal wires; nanodevices; reliable neuromorphic computing systems; sneak-path problem; system reduction scheme; voltage IR-drop; wire resistance; Memristors; Neurons; Programming; Resistance; Robustness; Training; Vectors;
Conference_Titel :
Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2014 IEEE/ACM International Conference on
Conference_Location :
San Jose, CA
DOI :
10.1109/ICCAD.2014.7001330