Handwritten-Digit Recognition by Hybrid Convolutional Neural Network based on HfO2 Memristive Spiking-Neuron

Although there is a huge progress in complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, construction of an artificial neural network using CMOS technology to realize the functionality comparable with that of human cerebral cortex containing 1010–1011 neurons is still of great challenge. Recently, phase change memristor neuron has been proposed to realize a human-brain level neural network operating at a high speed while consuming a small amount of power and having a high integration density. Although memristor neuron can be scaled down to nanometer, integration of 1010–1011 neurons still faces many problems in circuit complexity, chip area, power consumption, etc. In this work, we propose a CMOS compatible HfO2 memristor neuron that can be well integrated with silicon circuits. A hybrid Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based on the HfO2 memristor neuron is proposed and constructed. In the hybrid CNN, one memristive neuron can behave as multiple physical neurons based on the Time Division Multiplexing Access (TDMA) technique. Handwritten digit recognition is demonstrated in the hybrid CNN with a memristive neuron acting as 784 physical neurons. This work paves the way towards substantially shrinking the amount of neurons required in hardware and realization of more complex or even human cerebral cortex level memristive neural networks.