Data-Aware Partial ECC with Data Modulation of ReRAM with Non-volatile In-memory Computing for Image Recognition with Deep Neural Network

This paper proposes data-aware ECC of resistive random access memory (ReRAM) in the non-volatile in-memory computing for image recognition. Proposed Data-Aw are Partial ECC with Data Modulation (DAP-ECC w/ DM) is implemented in the memory controller without controller circuit area overhead. Because ReRAM has smaller capacity than NAND flash, proposed ECC efficiently reduces overhead of error-correcting code (ECC) parity for ReRAM. Proposed DAP-ECC considers the importance of the feature vector data of image recognition, decreases the data overhead, and ECC decode latency by each 75% compared with conventional ECC. Moreover, proposed data-aware ECC using DAP-ECC w/ DM, which fully utilizes the asymmetrical bit error rate (BER) characteristics of ReRAM, improves the acceptable BER by 1.91-times. Finally, the endurance of ReRAM for the image recognition is improved by 10-times.