International Business Machines Corporation
COUNTER BASED RESISTIVE PROCESSING UNIT FOR PROGRAMMABLE AND RECONFIGURABLE ARTIFICIAL-NEURAL-NETWORKS

Abstract:

Technical solutions are described for storing weight in a crosspoint device of a resistive processing unit (RPU) array. An example system includes a crosspoint array, wherein each array node represents a connection between neurons of the neural network, and wherein each node stores a weight assigned to the node. The crosspoint array includes a crosspoint device at each node. The crosspoint device includes a counter that has multiple single bit counters, and states of the counters represent the weight to be stored at the crosspoint device. Further, the crosspoint device includes a resistor device that has multiple resistive circuits, and each resistive circuit is associated with a respective counter from the counters. The resistive circuits are activated or deactivated according to a state of the associated counter, and an electrical conductance of the resistor device is adjusted based at least in part on the resistive circuits that are activated.