TY  - JOUR
AU  - Pedretti, Giacomo
AU  - Graves, Catherine E.
AU  - Van Vaerenbergh, Thomas
AU  - Serebryakov, Sergey
AU  - Foltin, Martin
AU  - Sheng, Xia
AU  - Mao, Ruibin
AU  - Li, Can
AU  - Strachan, John Paul
TI  - Differentiable Content Addressable Memory with Memristors
JO  - Advanced electronic materials
VL  - 8
IS  - 8
SN  - 2199-160X
CY  - Weinheim
PB  - Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
M1  - FZJ-2022-01761
SP  - 2101198 -
PY  - 2022
AB  - Memristors, Flash, and related nonvolatile analog device technologies offer in-memory computing structures operating in the analog domain, such as accelerating linear matrix operations in array structures. These take advantage of analog tunability and large dynamic range. At the other side, content addressable memories (CAM) are fast digital lookup tables which effectively perform nonlinear Boolean logic and return a digital match/mismatch value. Recently, nonvolatile analog CAMs have been presented merging analog storage and analog search operations with digital match/mismatch output. However, CAM blocks cannot easily be inserted within a larger adaptive system due to the challenges of training and learning with binary outputs. Here, a missing link between analog crossbar arrays and CAMs, namely a differentiable content addressable memory (dCAM), is presented. Utilizing nonvolatile memories that act as a “soft” memory with analog outputs, dCAM enables learning and fine-tuning of the memory operation and performance. Four applications are quantitatively evaluated to highlight the capabilities: improved data pattern storage, improved robustness to noise and variability, reduced energy and latency performance, and an application to solving Boolean satisfiability optimization problems. The use of dCAM is envisioned as a core building block of fully differentiable computing systems employing multiple types of analog compute operations and memories.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000762807700001
DO  - DOI:10.1002/aelm.202101198
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/906936
ER  -