Generic Wave Digital Emulation of Memristive Devices

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile wave digital emulator for memristive devices, enabling real-time, passive, and reusable simulation of various memristor models for neuromorphic circuit applications.

Contribution

It presents a generic, flexible wave digital approach to emulate memristive devices, facilitating efficient and real-time integration into neuromorphic systems.

Findings

Successfully emulated different mathematical memristor models

Real-time emulation of a physical memristive device

Preserved passivity and reusability of the emulator

Abstract

Neuromorphic circuits mimic partial functionalities of brain in a bio-inspired information processing sense in order to achieve similar efficiencies as biological systems. While there are common mathematical models for neurons, which can be realized as nonlinear oscillating circuits, an electrical representation of the synaptic coupling between those is more challenging. Since this coupling strength depends on the learning procedure in the past, it should include a kind of memory. We believe that memristive devices, which are essentially nonlinear resistors with memory, are potential candidates for replacing synapses in neuromorphic circuits. Due to a huge number of synapses in a complex neuromorphic circuit, pre-investigations based on simulations of such systems can be very inefficient and time-consuming. Flexible and real-time capable memristive emulators, which can directly be incorporated into real circuits, can overcome this problem. In our approach, we introduce a generic memristive emulator based on wave digital principles. The proposed emulator is flexible, robust, efficient, and it preserves the passivity of the real device. This, in turn, also makes it reusable independent of a particular application. In the presented work, the emulation of different mathematical models as well as of a real device based on physical models are listed.