A High Throughput Generative Vector Autoregression Model for Stochastic Synapses

arXiv (Cornell University)

Abstract

By imitating the synaptic connectivity and plasticity of the brain, emerging electronic nanodevices offer new opportunities as the building blocks of neuromorphic systems. One challenge for largescale simulations of computational architectures based on emerging devices is to accurately capture device response, hysteresis, noise, and the covariance structure in the temporal domain as well as between the different device parameters. We address this challenge with a high throughput generative model for synaptic arrays that is based on a recently available type of electrical measurement data for resistive memory cells. We map this real world data onto a vector autoregressive stochastic process to accurately reproduce the device parameters and their cross-correlation structure. While closely matching the measured data, our model is still very fast; we provide parallelized implementations for both CPUs and GPUs and demonstrate array sizes above one billion cells and throughputs exceeding one hundred million weight updates per second, above the pixel rate of a 30 frames/s 4K video stream.

Authors 7

1. T. Hennen Aachen IWE II

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   IWE II , RWTH Aachen University , Aachen , Germany

2. Adler Gonçalves Elias

   Western Digital (United States)

   Affiliation as printed

   Western Digital San Jose Research Center , CA , USA

3. J. F. Nodin

   Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives · CEA Grenoble · Laboratoire d'Électronique des Technologies de l'Information

   Affiliation as printed

   CEA , LETI , MINATEC Campus , Grenoble , France

4. G. Molas

   Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives · CEA Grenoble · Laboratoire d'Électronique des Technologies de l'Information

   Affiliation as printed

   CEA , LETI , MINATEC Campus , Grenoble , France

   Now with Weebit Nano Ltd

5. R. Waser Aachen IWE II

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   IWE II , RWTH Aachen University , Aachen , Germany

6. Dirk J. Wouters Aachen IWE II

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   IWE II , RWTH Aachen University , Aachen , Germany

7. D. Bedau

   Western Digital (United States)

   Affiliation as printed

   Western Digital San Jose Research Center , CA , USA