Threshold-type memristor-based crossbar array design and its application in handwritten digit recognition

Neuromorphic computing simulates the operation of biological brain function for information processing and can potentially solve the bottleneck of the Von Neumann architec-ture. Inspired by the real characteristics of physical memristive devices,we propose a threshold-type nonlinear voltage-con-trolled memristor mathematical model which is used to design a novel memristor-based crossbar array. The presented crossbar array can simulate the synaptic weight in real number field rather than only positive number field. Theoretical analysis and simula-tion results of a 2×2 image inversion operation validate the feasi-bility of the proposed crossbar array and the necessary training and inference functions. Finally,the presented crossbar array is used to construct the neural network and then applied in the handwritten digit recognition. The Mixed National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) database is adopted to train this neural network and it achieves a satisfactory accuracy.