US 11,988,555 B1
Configurable sensor units and sensor apparatus
Ghazi Sarwat Syed, Zurich (CH); Urs Egger, Zurich (CH); and Abu Sebastian, Adliswil (CH)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Feb. 6, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/164,663.
Int. Cl. G01J 1/44 (2006.01)
CPC G01J 1/44 (2013.01) 25 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A configurable sensor unit for scalable computational sensor associated with NN (neural network) architectures, comprising:
a sensor device for generating an electrical signal, dependent on a stimulus sensed by the device, in a circuit;
a programmable non-volatile memory element operable in the circuit as a load resistor for the sensor device, whereby resistance of the load resistor depends on a programmed state of the memory element, wherein changes to responsivity of the configurable sensor unit is analogous to a synaptic weighting operation; and
an output for providing an output signal dependent on the electrical signal and the programmed state, wherein the output signal is computed, by the output, locally without any data conversion.