Tag Archives: Julie Grollier

Guide for memristive hardware design

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An August 15 ,2022 news item on ScienceDaily announces a type of guide for memristive hardware design,

They are many times faster than flash memory and require significantly less energy: memristive memory cells could revolutionize the energy efficiency of neuromorphic [brainlike] computers. In these computers, which are modeled on the way the human brain works, memristive cells function like artificial synapses. Numerous groups around the world are working on the use of corresponding neuromorphic circuits — but often with a lack of understanding of how they work and with faulty models. Jülich researchers have now summarized the physical principles and models in a comprehensive review article in the renowned journal Advances in Physics.

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An August 15, 2022 Forschungszentrum Juelich press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes two papers designed to help researchers better understand and design memristive hardware,

Certain tasks – such as recognizing patterns and language – are performed highly efficiently by a human brain, requiring only about one ten-thousandth of the energy of a conventional, so-called “von Neumann” computer. One of the reasons lies in the structural differences: In a von Neumann architecture, there is a clear separation between memory and processor, which requires constant moving of large amounts of data. This is time and energy consuming – the so-called von Neumann bottleneck. In the brain, the computational operation takes place directly in the data memory and the biological synapses perform the tasks of memory and processor at the same time.

In Jülich, scientists have been working for more than 15 years on special data storage devices and components that can have similar properties to the synapses in the human brain. So-called memristive memory devices, also known as memristors, are considered to be extremely fast, energy-saving and can be miniaturized very well down to the nanometer range. The functioning of memristive cells is based on a very special effect: Their electrical resistance is not constant, but can be changed and reset again by applying an external voltage, theoretically continuously. The change in resistance is controlled by the movement of oxygen ions. If these move out of the semiconducting metal oxide layer, the material becomes more conductive and the electrical resistance drops. This change in resistance can be used to store information.

The processes that can occur in cells are very complex and vary depending on the material system. Three researchers from the Jülich Peter Grünberg Institute – Prof. Regina Dittmann, Dr. Stephan Menzel, and Prof. Rainer Waser – have therefore compiled their research results in a detailed review article, “Nanoionic memristive phenomena in metal oxides: the valence change mechanism”. They explain in detail the various physical and chemical effects in memristors and shed light on the influence of these effects on the switching properties of memristive cells and their reliability.

“If you look at current research activities in the field of neuromorphic memristor circuits, they are often based on empirical approaches to material optimization,” said Rainer Waser, director at the Peter Grünberg Institute. “Our goal with our review article is to give researchers something to work with in order to enable insight-driven material optimization.” The team of authors worked on the approximately 200-page article for ten years and naturally had to keep incorporating advances in knowledge.

“The analogous functioning of memristive cells required for their use as artificial synapses is not the normal case. Usually, there are sudden jumps in resistance, generated by the mutual amplification of ionic motion and Joule heat,” explains Regina Dittmann of the Peter Grünberg Institute. “In our review article, we provide researchers with the necessary understanding of how to change the dynamics of the cells to enable an analog operating mode.”

“You see time and again that groups simulate their memristor circuits with models that don’t take into account high dynamics of the cells at all. These circuits will never work.” said Stephan Menzel, who leads modeling activities at the Peter Grünberg Institute and has developed powerful compact models that are now in the public domain (www.emrl.de/jart.html). “In our review article, we provide the basics that are extremely helpful for a correct use of our compact models.”

Roadmap neuromorphic computing

The “Roadmap of Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering”, which was published in May 2022, shows how neuromorphic computing can help to reduce the enormous energy consumption of IT globally. In it, researchers from the Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-7), together with leading experts in the field, have compiled the various technological possibilities, computational approaches, learning algorithms and fields of application. 

According to the study, applications in the field of artificial intelligence, such as pattern recognition or speech recognition, are likely to benefit in a special way from the use of neuromorphic hardware. This is because they are based – much more so than classical numerical computing operations – on the shifting of large amounts of data. Memristive cells make it possible to process these gigantic data sets directly in memory without transporting them back and forth between processor and memory. This could reduce the energy efficiency of artificial neural networks by orders of magnitude.

Memristive cells can also be interconnected to form high-density matrices that enable neural networks to learn locally. This so-called edge computing thus shifts computations from the data center to the factory floor, the vehicle, or the home of people in need of care. Thus, monitoring and controlling processes or initiating rescue measures can be done without sending data via a cloud. “This achieves two things at the same time: you save energy, and at the same time, personal data and data relevant to security remain on site,” says Prof. Dittmann, who played a key role in creating the roadmap as editor.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the ‘roadmap’,

2022 roadmap on neuromorphic computing and engineering by Dennis V Christensen, Regina Dittmann, Bernabe Linares-Barranco, Abu Sebastian, Manuel Le Gallo, Andrea Redaelli, Stefan Slesazeck, Thomas Mikolajick, Sabina Spiga, Stephan Menzel, Ilia Valov, Gianluca Milano, Carlo Ricciardi, Shi-Jun Liang, Feng Miao, Mario Lanza, Tyler J Quill, Scott T Keene, Alberto Salleo, Julie Grollier, Danijela Marković, Alice Mizrahi, Peng Yao, J Joshua Yang, Giacomo Indiveri, John Paul Strachan, Suman Datta, Elisa Vianello, Alexandre Valentian, Johannes Feldmann, Xuan Li, Wolfram H P Pernice, Harish Bhaskaran, Steve Furber, Emre Neftci, Franz Scherr, Wolfgang Maass, Srikanth Ramaswamy, Jonathan Tapson, Priyadarshini Panda, Youngeun Kim, Gouhei Tanaka, Simon Thorpe, Chiara Bartolozzi, Thomas A Cleland, Christoph Posch, ShihChii Liu, Gabriella Panuccio, Mufti Mahmud, Arnab Neelim Mazumder, Morteza Hosseini, Tinoosh Mohsenin, Elisa Donati, Silvia Tolu, Roberto Galeazzi, Martin Ejsing Christensen, Sune Holm, Daniele Ielmini and N Pryds. Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering , Volume 2, Number 2 DOI: 10.1088/2634-4386/ac4a83 20 May 2022 • © 2022 The Author(s)

This paper is open access.

Here’s the most recent paper,

Nanoionic memristive phenomena in metal oxides: the valence change mechanism by Regina Dittmann, Stephan Menzel & Rainer Waser. Advances in Physics
Volume 70, 2021 – Issue 2 Pages 155-349 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00018732.2022.2084006 Published online: 06 Aug 2022

This paper is behind a paywall.

Nano-neurons from a French-Japanese-US research team

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This news about nano-neurons comes from a Nov. 8, 2017 news item on defenceweb.co.za,

Researchers from the Joint Physics Unit CNRS/Thales, the Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies Centre (CNRS/Université Paris Sud), in collaboration with American and Japanese researchers, have developed the world’s first artificial nano-neuron with the ability to recognise numbers spoken by different individuals. Just like the recent development of electronic synapses described in a Nature article, this electronic nano-neuron is a breakthrough in artificial intelligence and its potential applications.

A Sept. 19, 2017 Thales press release, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

The latest artificial intelligence algorithms are able to recognise visual and vocal cues with high levels of performance. But running these programs on conventional computers uses 10,000 times more energy than the human brain. To reduce electricity consumption, a new type of computer is needed. It is inspired by the human brain and comprises vast numbers of miniaturised neurons and synapses. Until now, however, it had not been possible to produce a stable enough artificial nano-neuron which would process the information reliably.

Today [Sept. 19, 2017 or July 27, 2017 when the paper was published in Nature?]], for the first time, researchers have developed a nano-neuron with the ability to recognise numbers spoken by different individuals with 99.6% accuracy. This breakthrough relied on the use of an exceptionally stable magnetic oscillator. Each gyration of this nano-compass generates an electrical output, which effectively imitates the electrical impulses produced by biological neurons. In the next few years, these magnetic nano-neurons could be interconnected via artificial synapses, such as those recently developed, for real-time big data analytics and classification.

The project is a collaborative initiative between fundamental research laboratories and applied research partners. The long-term goal is to produce extremely energy-efficient miniaturised chips with the intelligence needed to learn from and adapt to the constantly ever-changing and ambiguous situations of the real world. These electronic chips will have many practical applications, such as providing smart guidance to robots or autonomous vehicles, helping doctors in their diagnosis’ and improving medical prostheses. This project included researchers from the Joint Physics Unit CNRS/Thales, the AIST, the CNS-NIST, and the Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies Centre (CNRS/Université Paris-Sud).

About the CNRS
The French National Centre for Scientific Research is Europe’s largest public research institution. It produces knowledge for the benefit of society. With nearly 32,000 employees, a budget exceeding 3.2 billion euros in 2016, and offices throughout France, the CNRS is present in all scientific fields through its 1100 laboratories. With 21 Nobel laureates and 12 Fields Medal winners, the organization has a long tradition of excellence. It carries out research in mathematics, physics, information sciences and technologies, nuclear and particle physics, Earth sciences and astronomy, chemistry, biological sciences, the humanities and social sciences, engineering and the environment.

About the Université Paris-Saclay (France)
To meet global demand for higher education, research and innovation, 19 of France’s most renowned establishments have joined together to form the Université Paris-Saclay. The new university provides world-class teaching and research opportunities, from undergraduate courses to graduate schools and doctoral programmes, across most disciplines including life and natural sciences as well as social sciences. With 9,000 masters students, 5,500 doctoral candidates, an equivalent number of engineering students and an extensive undergraduate population, some 65,000 people now study at member establishments.

About the Center for Nanoscale Science & Technology (Maryland, USA)
The CNST is a national user facility purposely designed to accelerate innovation in nanotechnology-based commerce. Its mission is to operate a national, shared resource for nanoscale fabrication and measurement and develop innovative nanoscale measurement and fabrication capabilities to support researchers from industry, academia, NIST and other government agencies in advancing nanoscale technology from discovery to production. The Center, located in the Advanced Measurement Laboratory Complex on NIST’s Gaithersburg, MD campus, disseminates new nanoscale measurement methods by incorporating them into facility operations, collaborating and partnering with others and providing international leadership in nanotechnology.

About the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Japan)
The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), one of the largest public research institutes in Japan, focuses on the creation and practical realization of technologies useful to Japanese industry and society, and on bridging the gap between innovative technological seeds and commercialization. For this, AIST is organized into 7 domains (Energy and Environment, Life Science and Biotechnology, Information Technology and Human Factors, Materials and Chemistry, Electronics and Manufacturing, Geological

About the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (France)
Established on 1 June 2016, the Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (C2N) was launched in the wake of the joint CNRS and Université Paris-Sud decision to merge and gather on the same campus site the Laboratory for Photonics and Nanostructures (LPN) and the Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale (IEF). Its location in the École Polytechnique district of the Paris-Saclay campus will be completed in 2017 while the new C2N buildings are under construction. The centre conducts research in material science, nanophotonics, nanoelectronics, nanobiotechnologies and microsystems, as well as in nanotechnologies.

There is a video featuring researcher Julie Grollier discussing their work but you will need your French language skills,

(If you’re interested, there is an English language video published on youtube on Feb. 19, 2017 with Julie Grollier speaking more generally about the field at the World Economic Forum about neuromorphic computing,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm2BGkTYFeQ

Here’s a link to and a citation for the team’s July 2017 paper,

Neuromorphic computing with nanoscale spintronic oscillators by Jacob Torrejon, Mathieu Riou, Flavio Abreu Araujo, Sumito Tsunegi, Guru Khalsa, Damien Querlioz, Paolo Bortolotti, Vincent Cros, Kay Yakushiji, Akio Fukushima, Hitoshi Kubota, Shinji Yuasa, Mark D. Stiles, & Julie Grollier. Nature 547, 428–431 (27 July 2017) doi:10.1038/nature23011 Published online 26 July 2017

This paper is behind a paywall.

Predicting how a memristor functions

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An April 3, 2017 news item on Nanowerk announces a new memristor development (Note: A link has been removed),

Researchers from the CNRS [Centre national de la recherche scientifique; France] , Thales, and the Universities of Bordeaux, Paris-Sud, and Evry have created an artificial synapse capable of learning autonomously. They were also able to model the device, which is essential for developing more complex circuits. The research was published in Nature Communications (“Learning through ferroelectric domain dynamics in solid-state synapses”)

An April 3, 2017 CNRS press release, which originated the news item, provides a nice introduction to the memristor concept before providing a few more details about this latest work (Note: A link has been removed),

One of the goals of biomimetics is to take inspiration from the functioning of the brain [also known as neuromorphic engineering or neuromorphic computing] in order to design increasingly intelligent machines. This principle is already at work in information technology, in the form of the algorithms used for completing certain tasks, such as image recognition; this, for instance, is what Facebook uses to identify photos. However, the procedure consumes a lot of energy. Vincent Garcia (Unité mixte de physique CNRS/Thales) and his colleagues have just taken a step forward in this area by creating directly on a chip an artificial synapse that is capable of learning. They have also developed a physical model that explains this learning capacity. This discovery opens the way to creating a network of synapses and hence intelligent systems requiring less time and energy.

Our brain’s learning process is linked to our synapses, which serve as connections between our neurons. The more the synapse is stimulated, the more the connection is reinforced and learning improved. Researchers took inspiration from this mechanism to design an artificial synapse, called a memristor. This electronic nanocomponent consists of a thin ferroelectric layer sandwiched between two electrodes, and whose resistance can be tuned using voltage pulses similar to those in neurons. If the resistance is low the synaptic connection will be strong, and if the resistance is high the connection will be weak. This capacity to adapt its resistance enables the synapse to learn.

Although research focusing on these artificial synapses is central to the concerns of many laboratories, the functioning of these devices remained largely unknown. The researchers have succeeded, for the first time, in developing a physical model able to predict how they function. This understanding of the process will make it possible to create more complex systems, such as a series of artificial neurons interconnected by these memristors.

As part of the ULPEC H2020 European project, this discovery will be used for real-time shape recognition using an innovative camera1 : the pixels remain inactive, except when they see a change in the angle of vision. The data processing procedure will require less energy, and will take less time to detect the selected objects. The research involved teams from the CNRS/Thales physics joint research unit, the Laboratoire de l’intégration du matériau au système (CNRS/Université de Bordeaux/Bordeaux INP), the University of Arkansas (US), the Centre de nanosciences et nanotechnologies (CNRS/Université Paris-Sud), the Université d’Evry, and Thales.

 

Image synapse

© Sören Boyn / CNRS/Thales physics joint research unit.

Artist’s impression of the electronic synapse: the particles represent electrons circulating through oxide, by analogy with neurotransmitters in biological synapses. The flow of electrons depends on the oxide’s ferroelectric domain structure, which is controlled by electric voltage pulses.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Learning through ferroelectric domain dynamics in solid-state synapses by Sören Boyn, Julie Grollier, Gwendal Lecerf, Bin Xu, Nicolas Locatelli, Stéphane Fusil, Stéphanie Girod, Cécile Carrétéro, Karin Garcia, Stéphane Xavier, Jean Tomas, Laurent Bellaiche, Manuel Bibes, Agnès Barthélémy, Sylvain Saïghi, & Vincent Garcia. Nature Communications 8, Article number: 14736 (2017) doi:10.1038/ncomms14736 Published online: 03 April 2017

This paper is open access.

Thales or Thales Group is a French company, from its Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

Thales Group (French: [talɛs]) is a French multinational company that designs and builds electrical systems and provides services for the aerospace, defence, transportation and security markets. Its headquarters are in La Défense[2] (the business district of Paris), and its stock is listed on the Euronext Paris.

The company changed its name to Thales (from the Greek philosopher Thales,[3] pronounced [talɛs] reflecting its pronunciation in French) from Thomson-CSF in December 2000 shortly after the £1.3 billion acquisition of Racal Electronics plc, a UK defence electronics group. It is partially state-owned by the French government,[4] and has operations in more than 56 countries. It has 64,000 employees and generated €14.9 billion in revenues in 2016. The Group is ranked as the 475th largest company in the world by Fortune 500 Global.[5] It is also the 10th largest defence contractor in the world[6] and 55% of its total sales are military sales.[4]

The ULPEC (Ultra-Low Power Event-Based Camera) H2020 [Horizon 2020 funded) European project can be found here,

The long term goal of ULPEC is to develop advanced vision applications with ultra-low power requirements and ultra-low latency. The output of the ULPEC project is a demonstrator connecting a neuromorphic event-based camera to a high speed ultra-low power consumption asynchronous visual data processing system (Spiking Neural Network with memristive synapses). Although ULPEC device aims to reach TRL 4, it is a highly application-oriented project: prospective use cases will b…

Finally, for anyone curious about Thales, the philosopher (from his Wikipedia entry), Note: Links have been removed,

Thales of Miletus (/ˈθeɪliːz/; Greek: Θαλῆς (ὁ Μῑλήσιος), Thalēs; c. 624 – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek/Phoenician philosopher, mathematician and astronomer from Miletus in Asia Minor (present-day Milet in Turkey). He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition,[1][2] and he is otherwise historically recognized as the first individual in Western civilization known to have entertained and engaged in scientific philosophy.[3][4]