Common-Source Amplifier Based Analog Artificial Neural Network Classifier

An analog artificial neural network (ANN) classifier using a common-source amplifier based nonlinear activation function is presented in this work. A shallow ANN is designed using transistor level circuits and a multinomial (10 classes) classification accuracy of 0.82 is achieved on the MNIST dataset which consists of handwritten images of digits from 0–9. Use of common-source amplifier structure simplifies the ANN and results in 5X lower energy consumption than existing analog classifiers. The classifier performance is validated using Spectre and Matlab simulations.