A PVT-robust Customized 4T Embedded DRAM Cell Array for Accelerating Binary Neural Networks

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are widely used for real-world applications. However, large amount of kernel and intermediate data incur a memory wall problem in resource-limited edge devices. The recent advances of a binary deep neural network (BNN) and a computing in-memory (CIM) have effectively alleviated this bottleneck especially when they are combined together. However, previous CIM-based accelerators for BNN are highly vulnerable to process/supply voltage/temperature (PVT) variation, resulting in severe accuracy degradation which makes them impractical to be employed in real-world edge devices. To address this vulnerability, we propose a PVT-robust accelerator architecture for BNN with a computable 4T embedded DRAM (eDRAM) cell array. First, we implement the XNOR operation of BNN in a time-multiplexed manner by utilizing the fundamental read operation of the conventional eDRAM cell. Next, a PVT-robust bit-count based on charge sharing is proposed with a computable 4T eDRAM cell array. In result, the proposed architecture achieves 6.9× less variation in PVT-variant environments which guarantees a stable accuracy and 2.03-49.4× improvement of energy efficiency over previous CIM-based accelerators.