One-step regression and classification with cross-point resistive memory arrays

Machine learning has been getting attention in recent years as a tool to process big data generated by the ubiquitous sensors used in daily life. High-speed, low-energy computing machines are in demand to enable real-time artificial intelligence processing of such data. These requirements challenge the current metal-oxide-semiconductor technology, which is limited by Moore's law approaching its end and the communication bottleneck in conventional computing architecture. Novel computing concepts, architectures, and devices are thus strongly needed to accelerate data-intensive applications. Here, we show that a cross-point resistive memory circuit with feedback configuration can train traditional machine learning algorithms such as linear regression and logistic regression in just one step by computing the pseudoinverse matrix of the data within the memory. One-step learning is further supported by simulations of the prediction of housing price in Boston and the training of a two-layer neural network for MNIST digit recognition.