Accelerating machine learning with Non-Volatile Memory: Exploring device and circuit tradeoffs

Alessandro Fumarola, Pritish Narayanan, Lucas L. Sanches, Severin Sidler, Jun-Woo Jang, Kibong Moon, Robert M. Shelby, Hyunsang Hwang, Geoffrey W. Burr

Abstract: Large arrays of the same nonvolatile memories (NVM) being developed for Storage-Class Memory (SCM) - such as Phase Change Memory (PCM) and Resistance RAM (ReRAM) - can also be used in non-Von Neumann neuromorphic computational schemes, with device conductance serving as synaptic “weight.” This allows the all-important multiply-accumulate operation within these algorithms to be performed efficiently at the weight data.