A memristor-based architecture combining memory and image processing

Image processing is a type of memory-access-intensive application and is applied in many fields. Logic operations are very simple ones in image processing. During these operations, memory access takes a majority of the total time consumed, which puts a great pressure on memory access speed and bandwidth. However, in traditional von Neumann architecture, memory access is the inherent bottleneck of the system; that is, the speed of memory’s data supply is far lower than the data request of processor. Memristor is considered to be the fourth circuit element after resistor, capacitor and inductor. It has the capacity of both processing and memory, which supplies a new idea for solving the “memory wall” problem. In this paper, memristor is used to build an architecture combining computing and memory, where the memory has the ability to handle some simple image processing operations. This architecture can reduce readings and writings of memory effectively, which saves memory bandwidth thus improving the efficiency of the system. Logic operations of images are considered in this paper to validate the architecture. The experimental results and theoretical analysis indicate that the architecture can reduce memory access effectively.