TrueNorth: Design and Tool Flow of a 65 mW 1 Million Neuron Programmable Neurosynaptic Chip
28 Aug 2015-IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (IEEE)-Vol. 34, Iss: 10, pp 1537-1557
TL;DR: This work developed TrueNorth, a 65 mW real-time neurosynaptic processor that implements a non-von Neumann, low-power, highly-parallel, scalable, and defect-tolerant architecture, and successfully demonstrated the use of TrueNorth-based systems in multiple applications, including visual object recognition.
Abstract: The new era of cognitive computing brings forth the grand challenge of developing systems capable of processing massive amounts of noisy multisensory data. This type of intelligent computing poses a set of constraints, including real-time operation, low-power consumption and scalability, which require a radical departure from conventional system design. Brain-inspired architectures offer tremendous promise in this area. To this end, we developed TrueNorth, a 65 mW real-time neurosynaptic processor that implements a non-von Neumann, low-power, highly-parallel, scalable, and defect-tolerant architecture. With 4096 neurosynaptic cores, the TrueNorth chip contains 1 million digital neurons and 256 million synapses tightly interconnected by an event-driven routing infrastructure. The fully digital 5.4 billion transistor implementation leverages existing CMOS scaling trends, while ensuring one-to-one correspondence between hardware and software. With such aggressive design metrics and the TrueNorth architecture breaking path with prevailing architectures, it is clear that conventional computer-aided design (CAD) tools could not be used for the design. As a result, we developed a novel design methodology that includes mixed asynchronous–synchronous circuits and a complete tool flow for building an event-driven, low-power neurosynaptic chip. The TrueNorth chip is fully configurable in terms of connectivity and neural parameters to allow custom configurations for a wide range of cognitive and sensory perception applications. To reduce the system’s communication energy, we have adapted existing application-agnostic very large-scale integration CAD placement tools for mapping logical neural networks to the physical neurosynaptic core locations on the TrueNorth chips. With that, we have successfully demonstrated the use of TrueNorth-based systems in multiple applications, including visual object recognition, with higher performance and orders of magnitude lower power consumption than the same algorithms run on von Neumann architectures. The TrueNorth chip and its tool flow serve as building blocks for future cognitive systems, and give designers an opportunity to develop novel brain-inspired architectures and systems based on the knowledge obtained from this paper.
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Cites methods from "TrueNorth: Design and Tool Flow of ..."
...(2017) implemented an energy-efficient spiking LSTM onto the IBM TrueNorth neurosynaptic system platform (Akopyan et al., 2015)....
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Book•
01 Jan 1982
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TL;DR: This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of event-based vision, with a focus on the applications and the algorithms developed to unlock the outstanding properties of event cameras.
Abstract: Event cameras are bio-inspired sensors that differ from conventional frame cameras: Instead of capturing images at a fixed rate, they asynchronously measure per-pixel brightness changes, and output a stream of events that encode the time, location and sign of the brightness changes. Event cameras offer attractive properties compared to traditional cameras: high temporal resolution (in the order of is), very high dynamic range (140dB vs. 60dB), low power consumption, and high pixel bandwidth (on the order of kHz) resulting in reduced motion blur. Hence, event cameras have a large potential for robotics and computer vision in challenging scenarios for traditional cameras, such as low-latency, high speed, and high dynamic range. However, novel methods are required to process the unconventional output of these sensors in order to unlock their potential. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of event-based vision, with a focus on the applications and the algorithms developed to unlock the outstanding properties of event cameras. We present event cameras from their working principle, the actual sensors that are available and the tasks that they have been used for, from low-level vision (feature detection and tracking, optic flow, etc.) to high-level vision (reconstruction, segmentation, recognition). We also discuss the techniques developed to process events, including learning-based techniques, as well as specialized processors for these novel sensors, such as spiking neural networks. Additionally, we highlight the challenges that remain to be tackled and the opportunities that lie ahead in the search for a more efficient, bio-inspired way for machines to perceive and interact with the world.
697 citations
Cites background from "TrueNorth: Design and Tool Flow of ..."
...Processor SpiNNaker TrueNorth Loihi DYNAP Braindrop Reference [258] [259] [260] [261] [262]...
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: An exhaustive review of the research conducted in neuromorphic computing since the inception of the term is provided to motivate further work by illuminating gaps in the field where new research is needed.
Abstract: Neuromorphic computing has come to refer to a variety of brain-inspired computers, devices, and models that contrast the pervasive von Neumann computer architecture This biologically inspired approach has created highly connected synthetic neurons and synapses that can be used to model neuroscience theories as well as solve challenging machine learning problems The promise of the technology is to create a brain-like ability to learn and adapt, but the technical challenges are significant, starting with an accurate neuroscience model of how the brain works, to finding materials and engineering breakthroughs to build devices to support these models, to creating a programming framework so the systems can learn, to creating applications with brain-like capabilities In this work, we provide a comprehensive survey of the research and motivations for neuromorphic computing over its history We begin with a 35-year review of the motivations and drivers of neuromorphic computing, then look at the major research areas of the field, which we define as neuro-inspired models, algorithms and learning approaches, hardware and devices, supporting systems, and finally applications We conclude with a broad discussion on the major research topics that need to be addressed in the coming years to see the promise of neuromorphic computing fulfilled The goals of this work are to provide an exhaustive review of the research conducted in neuromorphic computing since the inception of the term, and to motivate further work by illuminating gaps in the field where new research is needed
570 citations
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"TrueNorth: Design and Tool Flow of ..." refers background in this paper
...1) Haar-Like Features: Haar-like features, popular for face recognition [37], are differences of summed intensity in adjacent rectangles....
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01 Jan 2009TL;DR: The motivations and principles regarding learning algorithms for deep architectures, in particular those exploiting as building blocks unsupervised learning of single-layer modelssuch as Restricted Boltzmann Machines, used to construct deeper models such as Deep Belief Networks are discussed.
Abstract: Can machine learning deliver AI? Theoretical results, inspiration from the brain and cognition, as well as machine learning experiments suggest that in order to learn the kind of complicated functions that can represent high-level abstractions (e.g. in vision, language, and other AI-level tasks), one would need deep architectures. Deep architectures are composed of multiple levels of non-linear operations, such as in neural nets with many hidden layers, graphical models with many levels of latent variables, or in complicated propositional formulae re-using many sub-formulae. Each level of the architecture represents features at a different level of abstraction, defined as a composition of lower-level features. Searching the parameter space of deep architectures is a difficult task, but new algorithms have been discovered and a new sub-area has emerged in the machine learning community since 2006, following these discoveries. Learning algorithms such as those for Deep Belief Networks and other related unsupervised learning algorithms have recently been proposed to train deep architectures, yielding exciting results and beating the state-of-the-art in certain areas. Learning Deep Architectures for AI discusses the motivations for and principles of learning algorithms for deep architectures. By analyzing and comparing recent results with different learning algorithms for deep architectures, explanations for their success are proposed and discussed, highlighting challenges and suggesting avenues for future explorations in this area.
7,767 citations
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TL;DR: Inspired by the brain’s structure, an efficient, scalable, and flexible non–von Neumann architecture is developed that leverages contemporary silicon technology and is well suited to many applications that use complex neural networks in real time, for example, multiobject detection and classification.
Abstract: Inspired by the brain’s structure, we have developed an efficient, scalable, and flexible non–von Neumann architecture that leverages contemporary silicon technology. To demonstrate, we built a 5.4-billion-transistor chip with 4096 neurosynaptic cores interconnected via an intrachip network that integrates 1 million programmable spiking neurons and 256 million configurable synapses. Chips can be tiled in two dimensions via an interchip communication interface, seamlessly scaling the architecture to a cortexlike sheet of arbitrary size. The architecture is well suited to many applications that use complex neural networks in real time, for example, multiobject detection and classification. With 400-pixel-by-240-pixel video input at 30 frames per second, the chip consumes 63 milliwatts.
3,253 citations
"TrueNorth: Design and Tool Flow of ..." refers methods in this paper
...The TrueNorth architecture [1], depicted in Fig....
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...We tested the TrueNorth chip for logical correctness and extensively characterized it for performance and power consumption [1], [3]....
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TL;DR: The biological plausibility and computational efficiency of some of the most useful models of spiking and bursting neurons are discussed and their applicability to large-scale simulations of cortical neural networks is compared.
Abstract: We discuss the biological plausibility and computational efficiency of some of the most useful models of spiking and bursting neurons. We compare their applicability to large-scale simulations of cortical neural networks.
2,396 citations
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...Striking a balance, the implementation complexity is less than the Hodgkin–Huxley or Izhikevich neuron models, however, by combining 1–3 simple neurons, we are able to replicate all 20 of the biologically observed spiking neuron behaviors cataloged by Izhikevich [25]....
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