SySCIM:SystemC-AMS Simulation of Memristive Computation In-Memory

Computation-in-memory (CIM) is one of the most appealing computing paradigms, especially for implementing artificial neural networks. Non-volatile memories like ReRAMs, PCMs, etc., have proven to be promising candidates for the realization of CIM processors. However, these devices and their driving circuits are subject to non-idealities. This paper presents a comprehensive platform, named SysCIM, for simulating memristor-based CIM systems. SySCIM considers the impact of the non-idealities of the CIM components, including memristor device, memristor crossbar (interconnects), analog-to-digital converter, and transimpedance amplifier, on the vector-matrix multiplication performed by the CIM unit. The CIM modules are described in SystemC and SystemC-AMS to reach a higher simulation speed while maintaining high simulation accuracy. Experiments under different crossbar sizes show SySCIM performs simulations up to 117 x faster than HSPICE with less than 4% accuracy loss. The modular design of SySCIM provides researchers with an easy design-space exploration tool to investigate the effects of various non-idealities.