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Memory devices and applications for in-memory computing

Nature Nanotechnology volume 15, pages 529–544 (2020)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 16 July 2020

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Abstract

Traditional von Neumann computing systems involve separate processing and memory units. However, data movement is costly in terms of time and energy and this problem is aggravated by the recent explosive growth in highly data-centric applications related to artificial intelligence. This calls for a radical departure from the traditional systems and one such non-von Neumann computational approach is in-memory computing. Hereby certain computational tasks are performed in place in the memory itself by exploiting the physical attributes of the memory devices. Both charge-based and resistance-based memory devices are being explored for in-memory computing. In this Review, we provide a broad overview of the key computational primitives enabled by these memory devices as well as their applications spanning scientific computing, signal processing, optimization, machine learning, deep learning and stochastic computing.

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Fig. 1: In-memory computing.
Fig. 2: Charge-based memory devices and computational primitives.
Fig. 3: Resistance-based memory devices and computational primitives.
Fig. 4: The application landscape for in-memory computing.
Fig. 5: Increasing the precision of in-memory computing for scientific computing.
Fig. 6: Deep learning training and inference using in-memory computing.
Fig. 7: Stochasticity associated with memristive devices and applications in computing.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank T. Tuma for technical discussions and assistance with scientific illustrations, G. Sarwat and I. Boybat for critical review of the manuscript, and L. Rudin and N. Gustafsson for editorial help. A.S. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 682675).

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  1. IBM Research – Zurich, Rüschlikon, Switzerland

    Abu Sebastian, Manuel Le Gallo, Riduan Khaddam-Aljameh & Evangelos Eleftheriou

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  1. Abu Sebastian
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Sebastian, A., Le Gallo, M., Khaddam-Aljameh, R. et al. Memory devices and applications for in-memory computing. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 529–544 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0655-z

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