Design of a Neural Chip for Classifying Iris Flowers based on CMOS Analog Neurons

A calibration-free analog neuron circuit is proposed as a viable alternative to the power hungry digital neuron in implementing a deep neural network. The conventional analog neuron requires calibrations because a voltage-mode link is used between the soma and the synapse, which results in significant uncertainty in terms of current mapping. In this work, a current-mode link is used to establish a robust link between the soma and the synapse against the variations in the process and interconnection impedances. The increased hardware owing to the adoption of the current-mode link is estimated to be manageable because the number of neurons in each layer of the neural network is typically bounded. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed analog neuron, a simple neural network with $4{\times}7{\times}3$ architecture has been designed for classifying iris flowers. The chip is now under fabrication in 0.35 mm CMOS technology. Thus, the proposed true current-mode analog neuron can be a practical option in realizing power-efficient neural networks for edge computing.