Temperature-Resilient RRAM-Based In-Memory Computing for DNN Inference

Jian Meng, Wonbo Shim, Li Yang, Injune Yeo, Deliang Fan, Shimeng Yu, Jae Sun Seo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Resistive random access memory (RRAM)-based in-memory computing (IMC) has emerged as a promising paradigm for efficient deep neural network (DNN) acceleration. However, the multibit RRAMs often suffer from nonideal characteristics such as drift and retention failure against temperature changes, leading to significant inference accuracy degradation. In this article, we present a new temperature-resilient RRAM-based IMC scheme for reliable DNN inference hardware. From a 90-nm RRAM prototype chip, we first measure the retention characteristics of multilevel HfO2 RRAMs at various temperatures up to 120 C, and then rigorously model the temperature-dependent RRAM retention behavior. We propose a novel and efficient DNN training/inference scheme along with the system-level hardware design to resolve the temperature-dependent retention issues with one-time DNN deployment. Employing the proposed scheme on a 256×256 RRAM array with the circuit-level benchmark simulator NeuroSim, we demonstrate robust RRAM IMC-based DNN inference where >30% CIFAR-10 accuracy and > >60% TinyImageNet accuracy are recovered against temperature variations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)89-98
Number of pages10
JournalIEEE Micro
Volume42
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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