Zhengnan Fu

Junyi Yang, Shuai Dong, Zhengnan Fu et al.

SRAM-based analog computing-in-memory demonstrates outstanding efficiency. However, it faces three critical challenges: significant ADC overhead, high latency for multi-bit inputs, and limited read bitline voltage. To address these issues, this work proposes a multi-bit highly reconfigurable 256x128 in-memory computing array supporting 1-7b input, 2-4b weight, and 1-7b output. Three key innovations are introduced: 1) The IMADC occupies only 3% area overhead, achieving a 9x improvement compared to previous IMADC; 2) The BSCHA reduces latency by 1.9x and 6.6x compared to traditional pulse-width modulation (PWM) and bit-slicing modes, respectively; 3) A dual-8T bitcell enabling ternary weight storage through a decoupled read path, integrated with a read wordline under-driven cascode technique, improves linearity of unit discharge current by 7x and increases the usable read bitline voltage by 3.5x.

Gaishan Li, Zhengnan Fu, Anubhab Tripathi et al.

This paper presents a novel hardware system for high-speed, event-sparse sampling-based electronic skin (e-skin)that integrates sensing and neuromorphic computing. The system is built around a 16x16 piezoresistive tactile array with front end and introduces a event-based binary scan search strategy to classify the digits. This event-driven strategy achieves a 12.8x reduction in scan counts, a 38.2x data compression rate and a 28.4x equivalent dynamic range, a 99% data sparsity, drastically reducing the data acquisition overhead. The resulting sparse data stream is processed by a multi-layer convolutional spiking neural network (Conv-SNN) implemented on an FPGA, which requires only 65% of the computation and 15.6% of the weight storage relative to a CNN. Despite these significant efficiency gains, the system maintains a high classification accuracy of 92.11% for real-time handwritten digit recognition. Furthermore, a real neuromorphic tactile dataset using Address Event Representation (AER) is constructed. This work demonstrates a fully integrated, event-driven pipeline from analog sensing to neuromorphic classification, offering an efficient solution for robotic perception and human-computer interaction.