Application of mathematical morphology operation with memristor-based computation-in-memory architecture for detecting manufacturing defects

Abstract Mathematical morphology operations are widely used in image processing such as defect analysis in semiconductor manufacturing and medical image analysis. These data-intensive applications have high requirements during hardware implementation that are challenging for conventional hardware platforms such as central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs). Computation-in-memory (CIM) provides a possible solution for highly efficient morphology operations. In this study, we demonstrate the application of morphology operation with a novel memristor-based auto-detection architecture and demonstrate non-neuromorphic computation on a multi-array-based memristor system. Pixel-by-pixel logic computations with low parallelism are converted to parallel operations using memristors. Moreover, hardware-implemented computer-integrated manufacturing was used to experimentally demonstrate typical defect detection tasks in integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing and medical image analysis. In addition, we developed a new implementation scheme employing a four-layer network to realize small-object detection with high parallelism. The system benchmark based on the hardware measurement results showed significant improvement in the energy efficiency by approximately 358 times and 32 times more than when a CPU and GPU were employed, respectively, exhibiting the advantage of the proposed memristor-based morphology operation.