Patent ID: 8892487

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: an electronic synapse configured for interconnecting a pre-synaptic electronic neuron and a post-synaptic electronic neuron, the electronic synapse comprising: a first memory element maintaining a first bit for reading, wherein the first bit represents a state of the electronic synapse; additional memory elements maintaining meta information used for updating the state of the electronic synapse, wherein the meta information includes a second bit and a third bit for setting and resetting, respectively, the state of the electronic synapse for reinforcement learning based on a learning rule; and an update module configured for: reading the meta information from said additional memory elements in response to an update signal for reinforcement learning; and updating the state of the electronic synapse in the first memory element based on the meta information in response to the update signal; wherein the meta information is based on a pre-synaptic neuron spiking signal and a post-synaptic neuron spiking signal of the pre-synaptic neuron and the post-synaptic neuron, respectively; and wherein the state of the electronic synapse is set and reset based on the meta information.