The mise en scene of memristive networks: effective memory, dynamics and learning

Abstract: We discuss the properties of the dynamics of purely memristive circuits using a recently derived consistent equation for the internal memory variables of the involved memristors. In particular, we show that the number of independent memory states in a memristive circuit is constrained by the circuit conservation laws, and that the dynamics preserves these symmetries by means of a projection on the physical subspace. Moreover, we discuss other symmetries of the dynamics under various transformations of the internal memory, and study the linearized and strongly non-linear regimes of the dynamics. In the strongly non-linear regime, we derive a conservation law for the internal memory variables. We also provide a condition on the reality of the eigenvalues of Lyapunov matrices describing the linearized dynamics close to a fixed point. We show that the eigenvalues ca be imaginary only for mixtures of passive and active components. Our last result concerns the weak non-linear regime. We show that the internal memory dynamics can be interpreted as a constrained gradient descent, and provide the functional being minimized. This latter result provides another direct connection between memristors and learning.