School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering
M.S. Final Oral Defense
STDP implementation using CBRAM devices in CMOS
by
Mahraj Sivaraj
22 June 2015
2 pm
GWC 208C
Committee:
Hugh Barnaby, Chair
Michael Kozicki
Jenifer Blain Christen
Abstract
Alternative computation based on neural systems on a nanoscale device is becoming
of increasing interest because of the massive parallelism and scalability it provides.
Neural based computation systems also offer defect finding and self healing mechanisms.
Traditional Von Neumann based architectures (which separates the memory and
computation units) inherently suffer from the Von Neumann bottleneck whereby the
processor is limited by the number of instructions it fetches. The clock driven Von
Neumann computer survived with technology scaling. However as transistor scaling is
slowly coming to an end with channel lengths becoming a few nanometers in length,
processor speeds are beginning to saturate. This lead to the development of multi-core
systems which process data in parallel, with each core being based on the Von Neumann
architecture.
The human brain has always been a mystery to scientists. Modern day super
computers are outperformed by the human brain in certain computations. The human
brain occupies far less space and consumes a fraction of the power a super computer does
with certain processes such as pattern recognition. Neuromorphic computing aims to
mimic biological neural systems on silicon to exploit the massive parallelism that neural
systems offer. Neuromorphic systems are event driven systems rather than being clock
driven. One of the issues faced by neuromorphic computing was the area occupied by
these circuits. With recent developments in the field of nanotechnology, memristive
devices on a nanoscale have been developed and show a promising solution. Memristor
based synapses can be up to 3 orders smaller than CMOS based synapses.
In this thesis, the Programmable Metallization Cell (a memristive device) is used to
prove a learning algorithm known as Spike Time Dependant Plasticity. This learning
algorithm is an extension to Hebb’s learning rule in which the synapses weight can be
altered by the relative timing of spikes across it. The synaptic weight with the memristor
will be its conductance, and CMOS oscillator based circuits will be used to produce
spikes that can modulate the memristor conductance by firing with different phases
differences.