# CIM-NET: A Video Denoising Deep Neural Network Model Optimized for Computing-in-Memory Architectures

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21522 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21522/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Learning both Weights and Connections for Efficient Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02626/) (2015)
- [Knowledge Distillation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05525/) (2020)
- [Quantization and Training of Neural Networks for Efficient Integer-Arithmetic-Only Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05877/) (2017)
- [Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03981/) (2016)
- [Video Enhancement with Task-Oriented Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09078/) (2017)
- [FFDNet: Toward a Fast and Flexible Solution for CNN based Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04026/) (2017)
- [VRT: A Video Restoration Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12288/) (2022)
- [Video Object Segmentation with Language Referring Expressions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08006/) (2018)
- [FastDVDnet: Towards Real-Time Deep Video Denoising Without Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01361/) (2019)
- [DVDnet: A Fast Network for Deep Video Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.11890/) (2019)
- [Dancing under the stars: video denoising in starlight](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.04210/) (2022)
- [AnalogNAS: A Neural Network Design Framework for Accurate Inference with Analog In-Memory Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10459/) (2023)
- [Lightweight network towards real-time image denoising on mobile devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.04687/) (2022)
- [Lightweight Video Denoising Using a Classic Bayesian Backbone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03904/) (2024)
- [An empirical study on the effects of different types of noise in image classification tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02781/) (2016)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While deep neural network (DNN)-based video denoising has demonstrated significant performance, deploying state-of-the-art models on edge devices remains challenging due to stringent real-time and energy efficiency requirements. Computing-in-Memory (CIM) chips offer a promising solution by integrating computation within memory cells, enabling rapid matrix-vector multiplication (MVM). However, existing DNN models are often designed without considering CIM architectural constraints, thus limiting their acceleration potential during inference. To address this, we propose a hardware-algorithm co-design framework incorporating two innovations: (1) a CIM-Aware Architecture, CIM-NET, optimized for large receptive field operation and CIM's crossbar-based MVM acceleration; and (2) a pseudo-convolutional operator, CIM-CONV, used within CIM-NET to integrate slide-based processing with fully connected transformations for high-quality feature extraction and reconstruction. This framework significantly reduces the number of MVM operations, improving inference speed on CIM chips while maintaining competitive performance. Experimental results indicate that, compared to the conventional lightweight model FastDVDnet, CIM-NET substantially reduces MVM operations with a slight decrease in denoising performance. With a stride value of 8, CIM-NET reduces MVM operations to 1/77th of the original, while maintaining competitive PSNR (35.11 dB vs. 35.56 dB