Classification is an important task at which both biological and artificial neural networks excel(1,2). In machine learning, nonlinear projection into a high-dimensional feature space can make data linearly separable(3,4), simplifying the classification of complex features. Such nonlinear projections are computationally expensive in conventional computers. A promising approach is to exploit physical materials systems that perform this nonlinear projection intrinsically, because of their high computational density(5), inherent parallelism and energy efficiency(6,7). However, existing approaches either rely on the systems'