RRAM-Based Energy Efficient Scalable Integrate and Fire Neuron With Built-In Reset Circuit

Abstract

In this brief, we propose a Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) based self-resetting Integrate and Fire ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{I}\&amp;\text{F}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) neuron. The proposed neuron circuit does not require any external bias voltage and the integration of control unit required to reset RRAM into neuron circuit optimizes its overall power consumption. The neuron circuit proposed in this brief consists of two RRAMs for integrate and fire operations, whereas, pulse propogation and reset circuit consists of 22 CMOS transistors. It consumes <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.5~fJ$ </tex-math></inline-formula> per spike, which is 48% and 53% less than the recent neurons designed using, nanoscale FBFET and PDSOI-MOSFET, respectively. The operating frequency of proposed neuron ranges from <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$277~KHz$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$03~MHz$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , which is at least 7.5% and 10% higher than the operating frequencies of above mentioned recent neurons, respectively. The inclusion of reset circuit into RRAM based neuron circuit enables the implementation of large scale spiking neural network (SNN), which makes it superior in terms of power and energy consumption.