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The exceptional capabilities of the human brain provide inspiration for artificially intelligent hardware that mimics both the function and the structure of neurobiology. In particular, the recent development of nanodevices with biomimetic characteristics promises to enable the development of neuromorphic architectures with exceptional computational efficiency. In this work, we propose biomimetic neurons comprised of domain wall-magnetic tunnel junctions that can be integrated into the first trainable CMOS-free recurrent neural network with biomimetic components. This paper demonstrates the computational effectiveness of this system for benchmark tasks and its superior computational efficiency relative to alternative approaches for recurrent neural networks. 

Neuromorphic computing is a promising candidate for beyond-von Neumann computer architectures, featuring low power consumption and high parallelism. Lateral inhibition and winner-take-all (WTA) features play a crucial role in neuronal competition of the nervous system as well as neuromorphic hardwares. The domain wall - magnetic tunnel junction (DWMTJ) neuron is an emerging spintronic artificial neuron device exhibiting intrinsic lateral inhibition. In this paper we show that lateral inhibition parameters modulate the neuron firing statistics in a DW-MTJ neuron array, thus emulating soft-winner-take-all (WTA) and firing group selection. 

The domain wall-magnetic tunnel junction (DW-MTJ) is a spintronic device that enables efficient logic circuit design because of its low energy consumption, small size, and non-volatility. Furthermore, the DW-MTJ is one of the few spintronic devices for which a direct cascading mechanism is experimentally demonstrated without any extra buffers; this enables potential design and fabrication of a large-scale DW-MTJ logic system. However, DW-MTJ logic relies on the conversion between electrical signals and magnetic states which is sensitive to process imperfection. Therefore, it is important to analyze the robustness of such DW-MTJ devices to anticipate the system reliability before fabrication. Here we propose a new DW-MTJ model that integrates the impacts of process variation to enable the analysis and optimization of DW-MTJ logic. This will allow circuit and device design that enhances the robustness of DW-MTJ logic and advances the development of energy-efficient spintronic computing systems. 

Neuromorphic computing captures the quintessential neural behaviors of the brain and is a promising candidate for the beyond-von Neumann computer architectures, featuring low power consumption and high parallelism. The neuronal lateral inhibition feature, closely associated with the biological receptive eld, is crucial to neuronal competition in the nervous system as well as its neuromorphic hardware counterpart. The domain wall - magnetic tunnel junction (DW-MTJ) neuron is an emerging spintronic articial neuron device exhibiting intrinsic lateral inhibition. This work discusses lateral inhibition mechanism of the DW-MTJ neuron and shows by micromagnetic simulation that lateral inhibition is eciently enhanced by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). 

Spintronic devices, especially those based on motion of a domain wall (DW) through a ferromagnetic track, have received a significant amount of interest in the field of neuromorphic computing because of their non-volatility and intrinsic current integration capabilities. Many spintronic neurons using this technology have already been proposed, but they also require external circuitry or additional device layers to implement other important neuronal behaviors. Therefore, they result in an increase in fabrication complexity and/or energy consumption. In this work, we discuss three neurons that implement these functions without the use of additional circuitry or material layers.