Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Computing-in-memory accelerator design with dynamic analog RAM cell and associated low power techniques with sparsity management
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Application No.: US17574363Application Date: 2022-01-12
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Publication No.: US11955167B2Publication Date: 2024-04-09
- Inventor: Jie Gu , Zhengyu Chen
- Applicant: Northwestern University
- Applicant Address: US IL Evanston
- Assignee: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
- Current Assignee: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
- Current Assignee Address: US IL Evanston
- Agency: BENESCH, FRIEDLANDER, COPLAN & ARONOFF LLP
- Main IPC: G11C16/34
- IPC: G11C16/34 ; G06F7/544 ; G11C11/408 ; G11C11/4094 ; G11C11/4096 ; G11C27/04 ; H03M1/00 ; H03M1/46

Abstract:
Systems formed by a multi-bit three-transistor (3T) memory cell (i.e., dynamic-analog RAM) are provided. The 3T memory cell includes: a read-access transistor M1 in electrical communication with a read bitline; a switch transistor M2 in electrical communication with the read-access transistor M1; a write-access transistor M3 in electrical communication with the read-access transistor M1 and a write bitline; and a memory node MEM in electrical communication between the read-access transistor M1 and the write-access transistor M3, wherein the memory node MEM is configured to store a 4-bit weight WE. An array of the 3T memory cells (i.e., dynamic-analog RAMs) may form a computing-in-memory (CIM) macro, and further form a convolutional neural network (CNN) accelerator by communicating with an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) which communicates with a global weight static random access memory and an activation static random access memory.
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