Abstract
High-density memristor-crossbar architecture is a very promising technology for future computing systems. The simplicity of the gateless-crossbar structure is both its principal advantage and the source of undesired sneak-paths of current. This parasitic current could consume an enormous amount of energy and ruin the readout process. We introduce new adaptive-threshold readout techniques that utilize the locality and hierarchy properties of the computer-memory system to address the sneak-paths problem. The proposed methods require a single memory access per pixel for an array readout. Besides, the memristive crossbar consumes an order of magnitude less power than state-of-the-art readout techniques.
Highlights
High-density memristor-crossbar architecture is a very promising technology for future computing systems
The simplicity of the gateless-crossbar structure is both its principal advantage and the source of undesired sneak-paths of current. This parasitic current could consume an enormous amount of energy and ruin the readout process
The memristive crossbar consumes an order of magnitude less power than state-of-the-art readout techniques
Summary
The direct solution to the sneak-paths problem is to add a selector (gate) to each memory cell such as: MOS transistors[23], threshold devices[24], and complementary memristors[2,25] This comes at the expense of array density and the complexity of the fabrication process (cost per bit)[21]. Knowing the sneak-path noise value at one location of the crossbar helps to estimate the values at other correlated locations Engineering such properties enables us to propose faster and more power-efficient readout techniques for the resistive crossbar memories. This locality property is of help only if the knowledge gained from reading a single bit can be adopted in reading its neighborhoods This is true for the “connected terminals” crossbar, where the values of ‘Rr’ and ‘Rc’ can be safely shared over the same row or column, respectively, as discussed in the previous sections. This shift is constant within a given row or column, based on the connection orientation
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