Decision making module based on stochastic magnetic tunnel junctions

In biological neural systems, noise is ubiquitous but does not affect the correct decisions made in the complex cognitive tasks. Decision-making in biological neural system is typically achieved by accumulating input information over a period of time. Inspired by recent developments in neurosciences, we design a decision-making module based on spintronic devices, utilizing superparamagnetic tunnel junctions as artificial neurons. The feasibility of this decision-making module is verified through circuit simulations. Taking a multi-layer perceptron as an example, the module significantly improves the accuracy of the perceptron in the handwritten digit recognition task. Furthermore, the spintronic decision-making module offers advantages over the conventional pooling methods, such as adaptive decision time, high performance and the absence of analog-to-digital conversion. The decision-making module is flexible to be integrated into artificial neural networks and provides a general yet effective solution to enhance performance against device noise.