Reliability Analysis of Memristor Crossbar Routers: Collisions and On/off Ratio Requirement

Memristors are commonly used in crossbar arrays as “in-memory computing” elements to solve the von-Neumann bottleneck problem. However, they can also be used as “in-memory routing” elements to configure on-chip interconnection schemes and route signals among computing elements in configurable multi-core neuromorphic processors. While there has been a significant focus on the use of memristive devices as in-memory computing elements, to date, studies on the fundamental reliability properties of memristors as routing elements are still missing. In this paper, we analyze the reliability issues of using these devices in routing crossbar arrays, caused by sharing routing resources (collisions), and undesired pulses due to the leakage paths (on/off ratio requirement). We show that there is a trade-off between routing collision probability and the degree of connectivity (i.e., fan-in) of the receivers sharing routing channels. We provide specifications and guidelines based on a theoretical analysis for engineering the properties of memristive devices, and for designing routing systems based on memristor crossbars.