Daddinounou Salah, Vatajelu Elena-Ioana
TIMA, Grenoble INP, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France.
Front Neurosci. 2024 May 15;18:1387339. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1387339. eCollection 2024.
In this study, we explore spintronic synapses composed of several Magnetic Tunnel Junctions (MTJs), leveraging their attractive characteristics such as endurance, nonvolatility, stochasticity, and energy efficiency for hardware implementation of unsupervised neuromorphic systems. Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) running on dedicated hardware are suitable for edge computing and IoT devices where continuous online learning and energy efficiency are important characteristics. We focus in this work on synaptic plasticity by conducting comprehensive electrical simulations to optimize the MTJ-based synapse design and find the accurate neuronal pulses that are responsible for the Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP) behavior. Most proposals in the literature are based on hardware-independent algorithms that require the network to store the spiking history to be able to update the weights accordingly. In this work, we developed a new learning rule, the Bi-Sigmoid STDP (B2STDP), which originates from the physical properties of MTJs. This rule enables immediate synaptic plasticity based on neuronal activity, leveraging in-memory computing. Finally, the integration of this learning approach within an SNN framework leads to a 91.71% accuracy in unsupervised image classification, demonstrating the potential of MTJ-based synapses for effective online learning in hardware-implemented SNNs.
在本研究中,我们探索了由多个磁性隧道结(MTJ)组成的自旋电子突触,利用其诸如耐久性、非易失性、随机性和能源效率等吸引人的特性,用于无监督神经形态系统的硬件实现。在专用硬件上运行的脉冲神经网络(SNN)适用于边缘计算和物联网设备,在这些设备中,持续在线学习和能源效率是重要特性。在这项工作中,我们通过进行全面的电学模拟来优化基于MTJ的突触设计,并找到负责脉冲时间依赖可塑性(STDP)行为的精确神经元脉冲,从而专注于突触可塑性。文献中的大多数提议基于与硬件无关的算法,这些算法要求网络存储脉冲历史以便能够相应地更新权重。在这项工作中,我们开发了一种新的学习规则,即双Sigmoid STDP(B2STDP),它源自MTJ的物理特性。该规则基于神经元活动实现即时突触可塑性,利用内存计算。最后,将这种学习方法集成到SNN框架中,在无监督图像分类中实现了91.71%的准确率,证明了基于MTJ的突触在硬件实现的SNN中进行有效在线学习的潜力。