SHF: Small: Development of Integrated Memristive Crossbar Circuits for Pattern Classification Applications

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Building artificial neural networks capable of matching the performance and functionality of their biological counterparts is one of the grand challenges in computing. The broad goal of this research project is to address one important aspect of this grand challenge, e.g., creating efficient hardware for implementing artificial neural networks. Artificial neural network based information processing, suitable for low precision applications, may indeed be particularly important in the present day context of energy efficient computing. If successful, this research has the potential to have broad and long lasting societal impact by improving energy efficiency and enriching functionality of existing electronics, and creating a large number of novel applications. The project will involve graduate and undergraduate students, include members of underrepresented groups and will thus help enlarge the workforce in information and communication technologies.The high complexity, connectivity and parallelism of neural networks make conventional technology hardware implementations rather inefficient. The core idea of this project is to utilize emerging memory devices, specifically memristors, which are essentially super-dense analog nonvolatile memory devices, to implement compact and energy efficient artificial neural networks. A particular experimental focus of the project is on demonstration of a hybrid memristive crossbar circuit implementation of small-scale (hundreds of neurons, thousands of synapses) multilayer perceptron performing pattern classification task. Although such a demonstration may only have a rather simple functionality, the resulting classifier would have all the key features of state-of-the-art deep learning convolutional neural network classifiers. The major focus is on the development of training algorithms compatible with memristor switching kinetics and investigation of the tradeoffs between complexity of hybrid circuits and classification performance. Theoretical modeling will guide experimental work towards most efficient implementations as well as ensure scaling of the approach to perform practical applications. Resolving hardware challenges for relatively simple neural networks would be essential for the development of more advanced neural networks capable of performing complex cognitive tasks.