TxSim:Modeling Training of Deep Neural Networks on Resistive Crossbar Systems

Resistive crossbars have attracted significant interest in the design of Deep Neural Network (DNN) accelerators due to their ability to natively execute massively parallel vector-matrix multiplications within dense memory arrays. However, crossbar-based computations face a major challenge due to a variety of device and circuit-level non-idealities, which manifest as errors in the vector-matrix multiplications and eventually degrade DNN accuracy. To address this challenge, there is a need for tools that can model the functional impact of non-idealities on DNN training and inference. Existing efforts towards this goal are either limited to inference, or are too slow to be used for large-scale DNN training. We propose TxSim, a fast and customizable modeling framework to functionally evaluate DNN training on crossbar-based hardware considering the impact of non-idealities. The key features of TxSim that differentiate it from prior efforts are: (i) It comprehensively models non-idealities during all training operations (forward propagation, backward propagation, and weight update) and (ii) it achieves computational efficiency by mapping crossbar evaluations to well-optimized BLAS routines and incorporates speedup techniques to further reduce simulation time with minimal impact on accuracy. TxSim achieves orders-of-magnitude improvement in simulation speed over prior works, and thereby makes it feasible to evaluate training of large-scale DNNs on crossbars. Our experiments using TxSim reveal that the accuracy degradation in DNN training due to non-idealities can be substantial (3%-10%) for large-scale DNNs, underscoring the need for further research in mitigation techniques. We also analyze the impact of various device and circuit-level parameters and the associated non-idealities to provide key insights that can guide the design of crossbar-based DNN training accelerators.