In-Memory Computing: The Next-Generation AI Computing Paradigm

Yufei Ma, Yuan Du, Li Du, Jun Lin, Zhongfeng Wang

Abstract: To overcome the memory bottleneck of von-Neuman architecture, various memory-centric computing techniques are emerging to reduce the latency and energy consumption caused by data communication. The great success of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, which involve a large number of computations and data movements, has motivated and accelerated the recent researches of in-memory computing (IMC) techniques to significantly reduce or even diminish the accesses of off-chip data, where memory is not only storing data but can also directly output computation results. For example, the multiply-and-accumulate (MAC) operations in deep learning algorithms can be realized by accessing the memory using the input activations. This paper will investigate the recent trends of IMC from techniques (SRAM, flash, RRAM and other types of non-volatile memory) to architecture and to applications, which will serve as a guide to the future advances on computing in-memory (CIM).