In-memory Training on Analog Devices with Limited Conductance States via Multi-tile Residual Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Li, Jindan, Wu, Zhaoxian, Liu, Gaowen, Gokmen, Tayfun, Chen, Tianyi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Li, Jindan
Wu, Zhaoxian
Liu, Gaowen
Gokmen, Tayfun
Chen, Tianyi
author_facet Li, Jindan
Wu, Zhaoxian
Liu, Gaowen
Gokmen, Tayfun
Chen, Tianyi
contents Analog in-memory computing (AIMC) accelerators enable efficient deep neural network computation directly within memory using resistive crossbar arrays, where model parameters are represented by the conductance states of memristive devices. However, effective in-memory training typically requires at least 8-bit conductance states to match digital baselines. Realizing such fine-grained states is costly and often requires complex noise mitigation techniques that increase circuit complexity and energy consumption. In practice, many promising memristive devices such as ReRAM offer only about 4-bit resolution due to fabrication constraints, and this limited update precision substantially degrades training accuracy. To enable on-chip training with these limited-state devices, this paper proposes a \emph{residual learning} framework that sequentially learns on multiple crossbar tiles to compensate the residual errors from low-precision weight updates. Our theoretical analysis shows that the optimality gap shrinks with the number of tiles and achieves a linear convergence rate. Experiments on standard image classification benchmarks demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms state-of-the-art in-memory analog training strategies under limited-state settings, while incurring only moderate hardware overhead as confirmed by our cost analysis.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_02516
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle In-memory Training on Analog Devices with Limited Conductance States via Multi-tile Residual Learning
Li, Jindan
Wu, Zhaoxian
Liu, Gaowen
Gokmen, Tayfun
Chen, Tianyi
Machine Learning
Hardware Architecture
Optimization and Control
Analog in-memory computing (AIMC) accelerators enable efficient deep neural network computation directly within memory using resistive crossbar arrays, where model parameters are represented by the conductance states of memristive devices. However, effective in-memory training typically requires at least 8-bit conductance states to match digital baselines. Realizing such fine-grained states is costly and often requires complex noise mitigation techniques that increase circuit complexity and energy consumption. In practice, many promising memristive devices such as ReRAM offer only about 4-bit resolution due to fabrication constraints, and this limited update precision substantially degrades training accuracy. To enable on-chip training with these limited-state devices, this paper proposes a \emph{residual learning} framework that sequentially learns on multiple crossbar tiles to compensate the residual errors from low-precision weight updates. Our theoretical analysis shows that the optimality gap shrinks with the number of tiles and achieves a linear convergence rate. Experiments on standard image classification benchmarks demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms state-of-the-art in-memory analog training strategies under limited-state settings, while incurring only moderate hardware overhead as confirmed by our cost analysis.
title In-memory Training on Analog Devices with Limited Conductance States via Multi-tile Residual Learning
topic Machine Learning
Hardware Architecture
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02516