Multi-tasking Memcapacitive Networks

Recent studies have shown that networks of memcapacitive devices provide an ideal computing platform of low power consumption for reservoir computing systems. Random, crossbar, or small-world power-law (SWPL) structures are common topologies for reservoir substrates to compute single tasks. However, neurological studies have shown that the interconnections of cortical brain regions associated with different functions form a rich-club structure. This structure allows human brains to perform multiple activities simultaneously. So far, memcapacitive reservoirs can perform only single tasks. Here, we propose, for the first time, cluster networks functioning as memcapacitive reservoirs to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Our results illustrate that cluster networks surpassed crossbar and SWPL networks by factors of 4.1×, 5.2×, and 1.7× on three tasks: Isolated Spoken Digits, MNIST, and CIFAR-10. Compared to single-task networks in our previous and published results, multitasking cluster networks could accomplish similar accuracies of 86%, 94.4%, and 27.9% for MNIST, Isolated Spoken Digits, and CIFAR-10. Our extended simulations reveal that both the input signal amplitudes and the inter-cluster connections contribute to the accuracy of cluster networks. Selecting optimal values for signal amplitudes and inter-cluster links is key to obtaining high classification accuracy and low power consumption. Our results illustrate the promise of memcapacitive brain-inspired cluster networks and their capability to solve multiple tasks simultaneously. Such novel computing architectures have the potential to make edge applications more efficient and allow systems that cannot be reconfigured to solve multiple tasks

A training algorithm for networks of high-variability reservoirs

Physical reservoir computing approaches have gained increased attention in recent years due to their potential for low-energy high-performance computing. Despite recent successes, there are bounds to what one can achieve simply by making physical reservoirs larger. Therefore, we argue that a switch from single-reservoir computing to multi-reservoir and even deep physical reservoir computing is desirable. Given that error backpropagation cannot be used directly to train a large class of multi-reservoir systems, we propose an alternative framework that combines the power of backpropagation with the speed and simplicity of classic training algorithms. In this work we report our findings on a conducted experiment to evaluate the general feasibility of our approach. We train a network of 3 Echo State Networks to perform the well-known NARMA-10 task, where we use intermediate targets derived through backpropagation. Our results indicate that our proposed method is well-suited to train multi-reservoir systems in an efficient way

Reservoir Computing with Thin-film Ferromagnetic Devices

Advances in artificial intelligence are driven by technologies inspired by the brain, but these technologies are orders of magnitude less powerful and energy efficient than biological systems. Inspired by the nonlinear dynamics of neural networks, new unconventional computing hardware has emerged with the potential for extreme parallelism and ultra-low power consumption. Physical reservoir computing demonstrates this with a variety of unconventional systems from optical-based to spintronic. Reservoir computers provide a nonlinear projection of the task input into a high-dimensional feature space by exploiting the system's internal dynamics. A trained readout layer then combines features to perform tasks, such as pattern recognition and time-series analysis. Despite progress, achieving state-of-the-art performance without external signal processing to the reservoir remains challenging. Here we show, through simulation, that magnetic materials in thin-film geometries can realise reservoir computers with greater than or similar accuracy to digital recurrent neural networks. Our results reveal that basic spin properties of magnetic films generate the required nonlinear dynamics and memory to solve machine learning tasks. Furthermore, we show that neuromorphic hardware can be reduced in size by removing the need for discrete neural components and external processing. The natural dynamics and nanoscale size of magnetic thin-films present a new path towards fast energy-efficient computing with the potential to innovate portable smart devices, self driving vehicles, and robotics

A Survey on Reservoir Computing and its Interdisciplinary Applications Beyond Traditional Machine Learning

Reservoir computing (RC), first applied to temporal signal processing, is a recurrent neural network in which neurons are randomly connected. Once initialized, the connection strengths remain unchanged. Such a simple structure turns RC into a non-linear dynamical system that maps low-dimensional inputs into a high-dimensional space. The model's rich dynamics, linear separability, and memory capacity then enable a simple linear readout to generate adequate responses for various applications. RC spans areas far beyond machine learning, since it has been shown that the complex dynamics can be realized in various physical hardware implementations and biological devices. This yields greater flexibility and shorter computation time. Moreover, the neuronal responses triggered by the model's dynamics shed light on understanding brain mechanisms that also exploit similar dynamical processes. While the literature on RC is vast and fragmented, here we conduct a unified review of RC's recent developments from machine learning to physics, biology, and neuroscience. We first review the early RC models, and then survey the state-of-the-art models and their applications. We further introduce studies on modeling the brain's mechanisms by RC. Finally, we offer new perspectives on RC development, including reservoir design, coding frameworks unification, physical RC implementations, and interaction between RC, cognitive neuroscience and evolution.Comment: 51 pages, 19 figures, IEEE Acces

Reservoir Computing in Materio

Reservoir Computing first emerged as an efficient mechanism for training recurrent neural networks and later evolved into a general theoretical model for dynamical systems. By applying only a simple training mechanism many physical systems have become exploitable unconventional computers. However, at present, many of these systems require careful selection and tuning by hand to produce usable or optimal reservoir computers. In this thesis we show the first steps to applying the reservoir model as a simple computational layer to extract exploitable information from complex material substrates. We argue that many physical substrates, even systems that in their natural state might not form usable or "good" reservoirs, can be configured into working reservoirs given some stimulation. To achieve this we apply techniques from evolution in materio whereby configuration is through evolved input-output signal mappings and targeted stimuli. In preliminary experiments the combined model and configuration method is applied to carbon nanotube/polymer composites. The results show substrates can be configured and trained as reservoir computers of varying quality. It is shown that applying the reservoir model adds greater functionality and programmability to physical substrates, without sacrificing performance. Next, the weaknesses of the technique are addressed, with the creation of new high input-output hardware system and an alternative multi-substrate framework. Lastly, a substantial effort is put into characterising the quality of a substrate for reservoir computing, i.e its ability to realise many reservoirs. From this, a methodological framework is devised. Using the framework, radically different computing substrates are compared and assessed, something previously not possible. As a result, a new understanding of the relationships between substrate, tasks and properties is possible, outlining the way for future exploration and optimisation of new computing substrates

Memcapacitive Reservoir Computing Architectures

In this thesis, I propose novel brain-inspired and energy-efficient computing systems. Designing such systems has been the forefront goal of neuromorphic scientists over the last few decades. The results from my research show that it is possible to design such systems with emerging nanoscale memcapacitive devices. Technological development has advanced greatly over the years with the conventional von Neumann architecture. The current architectures and materials, however, will inevitably reach their physical limitations. While conventional computing systems have achieved great performances in general tasks, they are often not power-efficient in performing tasks with large input data, such as natural image recognition and tracking objects in streaming video. Moreover, in the von Neumann architecture, all computations take place in the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and the results are saved in the memory. As a result, information is shuffled back and forth between the memory and the CPU for processing, which creates a bottleneck due to the limited bandwidth of data paths. Adding cache memory and using general-purpose Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) do not completely resolve this bottleneck. Neuromorphic architectures offer an alternative to the conventional architecture by mimicking the functionality of a biological neural network. In a biological neural network, neurons communicate with each other through a large number of dendrites and synapses. Each neuron (a processing unit) locally processes the information that is stored in its input synapses (memory units). Distributing information to neurons and localizing computation at the synapse level alleviate the bottleneck problem and allow for the processing of a large amount of data in parallel. Furthermore, biological neural networks are highly adaptable to complex environments, tolerant of system noise and variations, and capable of processing complex information with extremely low power. Over the past five decades, researchers have proposed various brain-inspired architectures to perform neuromorphic tasks. IBM\u27s TrueNorth is considered as the state-of-the-art brain-inspired architecture. It has 106 CMOS neurons with 256 x 256 programmable synapses and consumes about 60nW/neuron. Even though TrueNorth is power-efficient, its number of neurons and synapses is nothing compared to a human brain that has 1011 neurons and each neuron has, on average, 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. The human brain only consumes 2.3nW/neuron. The memristor brought neuromorphic computing one step closer to the human brain target. A memristor is a passive nano-device that has a memory. Its resistance changes with applied voltages. The resistive change with an applied voltage is similar to the function of a synapse. Memristors have been the prominent option for designing low power systems with high-area density. In fact, Truong and Min reported that an improved memristor-based crossbar performed a neuromorphic task with 50% reduction in area and 48% of power savings compared to CMOS arrays. However, memristive devices, by their nature, are still resistors, and the power consumption is bounded by their resistance. Here, a memcapacitor offers a promising alternative. My initial work indicated that memcapacitive networks performed complex tasks with equivalent performance, compared to memristive networks, but with much higher energy efficiency. A memcapacitor is also a two-terminal nano-device and its capacitance varies with applied voltages. Similar to a memristor, the capacitance of the memcapacitor changes with an applied voltage, similar to the function of a synapse. The memcapacitor is a storage device and does not consume static energy. Its switching energy is also small due to its small capacitance (nF to pF range). As a result, networks of memcapacitors have the potential to perform complex tasks with much higher power efficiency. Several memcapacitive synaptic models have been proposed as artificial synapses. Pershin and Di Ventra illustrated that a memcapacitor with two diodes has the functionality of a synapse. Flak suggested that a memcapacitor behaves as a synapse when it is connected with three CMOS switches in a Cellular Nanoscale Network (CNN). Li et al. demonstrated that when four identical memcapacitors are connected in a bridge network, they characterize the function of a synapse as well. Reservoir Computing (RC) has been used to explain higher-order cognitive functions and the interaction of short-term memory with other cognitive processes. Rigotti et al. observed that a dynamic system with short-term memory is essential in defining the internal brain states of a test agent. Although both traditional Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) and RC are dynamical systems, RC has a great benefit over RNNs due to the fact that the learning process of RC is simple and based on the training of the output layer. RC harnesses the computing nature of a random network of nonlinear devices, such as memcapacitors. Appeltant et al. showed that RC with a simplified reservoir structure is sufficient to perform speech recognition. Fewer nonlinear units connecting in a delay feedback loop provide enough dynamic responses for RC. Fewer units in reservoirs mean fewer connections and inputs, and therefore lower power consumption. As Goudarzi and Teuscher indicated, RC architectures still have inherent challenges that need to be addressed. First, theoretical studies have shown that both regular and random reservoirs achieve similar performances for particular tasks. A random reservoir, however, is more appropriate for unstructured networks of nanoscale devices. What is the role of network structure in RC for solving a task (Q1)? Secondly, the nonlinear characteristics of nanoscale devices contribute directly to the dynamics of a physical network, which influences the overall performance of an RC system. To what degree is a mixture of nonlinear devices able to improve the performances of reservoirs (Q2)? Thirdly, modularity, such as CMOS circuits in a digital building, is an essential key in building a complex system from fundamental blocks. Is hierarchical RCs able to solve complex tasks? What network topologies/hierarchies will lead to optimal performance? What is the learning complexity of such a system (Q3)? My research goal is to address the above RC challenges by exploring memcapacitive reservoir architectures. The analysis of memcapacitive monolithic reservoirs addresses both questions Q1 and Q2 above by showing that Small-World Power-Law (SWPL) structure is an optimal topological structure for RCs to perform time series prediction (NARMA-10), temporal recognition (Isolate Spoken Digits), and spatial task (MNIST) with minimal power consumption. On average, the SWPL reservoirs reduce significantly the power consumption by a factor of 1.21x, 31x, and 31.2x compared to the regular, the random, and the small-world reservoirs, respectively. Further analysis of SWPL structures underlines that high locality α and low randomness β decrease the cost to the systems in terms of wiring and nanowire dissipated power but do not guarantee the optimal performance of reservoirs. With a genetic algorithm to refine network structure, SWPL reservoirs with optimal network parameters are able to achieve comparable performance with less power. Compared to the regular reservoirs, the SWPL reservoirs consume less power, by a factor of 1.3x, 1.4x, and 1.5x. Similarly, compared to the random topology, the SWPL reservoirs save power consumption by a factor of 4.8x, 1.6x, and 2.1x, respectively. The simulation results of mixed-device reservoirs (memristive and memcapacitive reservoirs) provide evidence that the combination of memristive and memcapacitive devices potentially enhances the nonlinear dynamics of reservoirs in three tasks: NARMA-10, Isolated Spoken Digits, and MNIST. In addressing the third question (Q3), the kernel quality measurements show that hierarchical reservoirs have better dynamic responses than monolithic reservoirs. The improvement of dynamic responses allows hierarchical reservoirs to achieve comparable performance for Isolated Spoken Digit tasks but with less power consumption by a factor of 1.4x, 8.8x, 9.5, and 6.3x for delay-line, delay-line feedback, simple cycle, and random structures, respectively. Similarly, for the CIFAR-10 image tasks, hierarchical reservoirs gain higher performance with less power, by a factor of 5.6x, 4.2x, 4.8x, and 1.9x. The results suggest that hierarchical reservoirs have better dynamics than the monolithic reservoirs to solve sufficiently complex tasks. Although the performance of deep mem-device reservoirs is low compared to the state-of-the-art deep Echo State Networks, the initial results demonstrate that deep mem-device reservoirs are able to solve a high-dimensional and complex task such as polyphonic music task. The performance of deep mem-device reservoirs can be further improved with better settings of network parameters and architectures. My research illustrates the potentials of novel memcapacitive systems with SWPL structures that are brained-inspired and energy-efficient in performing tasks. My research offers novel memcapacitive systems that are applicable to low-power applications, such as mobile devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), and provides an initial design step to incorporate nano memcapacitive devices into future applications of nanotechnology

Memcapacitive Reservoir Computing

Memristors have successfully been used to build efficient reservoir computers. The power consumption of memristive reservoirs, however, is bounded by the resistive nature of such devices. Here, we show that memcapacitors, another device in the mem-device family, offer great promise for power-efficient reservoir computers.We simulated memcapacitive reservoirs with two different device models and benchmarked them with the NARMA-30 and the MNIST task. The results were compared to two memristive reservoirs as well as to a software echo state network. The memcapacitive reservoirs achieved comparable performance as the memcapacitive reservoirs but reduced the power consumption by about a factor of 500× for both tasks. We argue that memcapacitive reservoirs thus have great potential for low-power neuromorphic applications

Hierarchical Memcapacitive Reservoir Computing Architecture

The quest for novel computing architectures is currently driven by (1) machine learning applications and (2) the need to reduce power consumption. To address both needs, we present a novel hierarchical reservoir computing architecture that relies on energy-efficient memcapacitive devices. Reservoir computing is a new brain-inspired machine learning architecture that typically relies on a monolithic, i.e., unstructured, network of devices. We use memcapacitive devices to perform the computations because they do not consume static power. Our results show that hierarchical memcapacitive reservoir computing device networks have a higher kernel quality, outperform monolithic reservoirs by 10%, and reduce the power consumption by a factor of 3.4× on our benchmark tasks. The proposed new architecture is relevant for building novel, adaptive, and power-efficient neuromorphic hardware with applications in embedded systems, the Internet-of-Things, and robotics