Neuromorphic Computing
When we write programs that "learn," it turns out that we do and they don't.
-- Alan Perlis
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TrueNorth, 1M neurons |
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and 256M synapses |
This research studies efficient computation
structures that are asynchronous and neurally inspired.
The architecture of modern computer systems is quite different from
what we know about the organization of the brain. Most silicon
circuits use a global clock to coordinate activities while the brain operates
in an asynchronous, event-driven manner. There is a clear separation
between memory and computation circuits in conventional computers, while
memory and computation appear to be tightly integrated in brains.
The fan-out of a compute element in CMOS is small relative to the thousands
of connections made by an individual neuron to others. The goal of this
research direction is to extract computational principles from neuroscience
and apply them to silicon-based computation.
One principle seems to be the notion of sending information only when
there is a divergence from expected behavior. To capture this notion,
we propose a computation structure known as a Δ-dataflow network.
Δ-dataflow networks have filtering built-into their
computation structure. They can be used to implement a wide variety
of operations in an energy efficient manner, and
are suited for implementation on an asynchronous
architecture.
Another approach we are investigating is in the realm of spiking
computation. The neuromorphic VLSI community has been using
asynchronous circuits and address-event representation to build
systems that mimic biological neurons. Questions that are of interest
include: What are the applications of
such systems? How can we compute using a spike-based representation?
How do we design scalable neuromorphic systems that are highly
energy-efficient? How do biological neurons "compute"?
- Collaborators
- The Brainstorm project, with
- The SyNAPSE project, with
- The Neuromorphic Processor project, with
- Students/Postdocs
- Filipp Akopyan (Ph.D. 2011)
- Edward Bingham
- Nabil Imam (Ph.D. 2014)
- Saber Moradi (Ph.D. ETH Zurich)
- Publications
- Filipp Akopyan, Jun Sawada, Andrew Cassidy, Rodrigo Alvarez-Icaza, John Arthur, Paul Merolla, N Imam, Yutaka Nakamura, Pallab Datta, Gi-Joon Nam, Brian Taba, Michael Beakes, Bernard Brezzo, Jente Kuang, Rajit Manohar, William Risk, Bryan Jackson, and Dharmendra Modha.
TrueNorth: Design and Tool Flow of a 65mW 1 Million Neuron Programmable Neurosynaptic Chip.
IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, 34(10), October 2015.
(abstract, pdf) — Keynote paper
- Giovanni Rovere, Nabil Imam, Rajit Manohar, and Chiara Bartolozzi.
A QDI Asynchronous AER Serializer/Deserializer Link in 180nm for Event-Based Sensors for Robotic Applications.
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, May 2015.
(abstract)
- Andrew S. Cassidy, Rodrigo Alvarez-Icaza, Filipp Akopyan, Jun Sawada, John V. Arthur, Paul A. Merolla, Pallab Datta, Marc Gonzalez Tallada, Brian Taba, Alexander Andreopoulos, Arnon Amir, Steven K. Esser, Jeff Kusnitz, Rathinakumar Appuswamy, Chuck Haymes, Bernard Brezzo, Roger Moussalli, Ralph Bellofatto, Christian Baks, Michael Mastro, Kai Schleupen, Charles E. Cox, Ken Inoue, Steve Millman, Nabil Imam, Emmett McQuinn, Yutaka T. Nakamura, Ivan Vo, Chen Guo, Don Nguyen, Scott Lekuch, Sameh Assad, Daniel Friedman, Bryan L. Jackson, Myron D. Flickner, William P. Risk, Rajit Manohar, Dharmendra S. Modha.
Real-Time Scalable Cortical Computing at 46 Giga-Synaptic OPS/Watt with ~100x Speedup in Time-to-Solution and ~100,000x Reduction in Energy-to-Solution.
Proceedings of Supercomputing 2014, November 2014.
(abstract, pdf) — ACM Gordon Bell Prize finalist
- Paul A. Merolla, John V. Arthur, Rodrigo Alvarez-Icaza, Andrew S. Cassidy, Jun Sawada, Filipp Akopyan, Bryan L. Jackson, Nabil Imam, Chen Guo, Yutaka Nakamura, Bernad Brezzo, Ivan Vo, Steven K. Esser, Rathinakumar Appuswamy, Brian Taba, Arnon Amir, Myron D. Flickner, William P. Risk, Rajit Manohar, and Dharmendra Modha.
A Million Spiking-Neuron Integrated Circuit with a Scalable Communication Network and Interface.
Science, 345(6197):668--673, August 2014.
(abstract, pdf) — IBM Research 2014 Pat Goldberg Math/CS/EE Best Paper Award
- Saber Moradi, Nabil Imam, Rajit Manohar, and Giacomo Indiveri.
A Memory-Efficient Routing Method for Large-Scale Spiking Neural Networks.
21st European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design, September 2013.
(abstract, pdf)
- Nabil Imam, Kyle Wecker, Jonathan Tse, Robert Karmazin, and Rajit Manohar.
Neural Spiking Dynamics in Asynchronous Digital Circuits.
2013 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), August 2013.
(abstract, pdf)
- Rajit Manohar.
Scalable Routing in Large-Scale Neuromorphic Systems.
Symposium on Large-Scale Neuromorphic Systems at the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society [invited], August 2012.
- John Arthur, Paul Merolla, Filipp Akopyan, Rodrigo Alvarez, Andrew Cassidy, Shyamal Chandra, Steven Esser, Nabil Imam, William Risk, Daniel Rubin, Rajit Manohar and Dharmendra Modha.
Building Block of a Programmable Neuromorphic Substrate: A Digital Neurosynaptic Core.
2012 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), June 2012.
(abstract, pdf)
- Nabil Imam, Thomas Cleland, Rajit Manohar, Paul Merolla, John Arthur, Filipp Akopyan, and Dharmendra Modha.
Implementation of Olfactory Bulb Glomerular Layer Computation in a Digital Neurosynaptic Core.
Frontiers of Neuromorphic Engineering, Vol. 6, Number 83, June 2012.
(abstract, pdf)
- Nabil Imam, Filipp Akopyan, Paul Merolla, John Arthur, Rajit Manohar, and Dharmendra Modha.
A Digital Neurosynaptic Core Using Event-Driven QDI Circuits.
Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Symposium on Asynchronous Circuits and Systems (ASYNC), May 2012.
(abstract, pdf) — Best paper award
- Paul Merolla, John Arthur, Filipp Akopyan, Nabil Imam, Rajit Manohar, Dharmendra Modha.
A Digital Neurosynaptic Core Using Embedded Crossbar Memory with 45pJ per Spike in 45nm.
Proceedings of the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), September 2011.
(abstract, pdf)
- Nabil Imam and Rajit Manohar.
Address-Event Communication Using Token-Ring Mutual Exclusion.
Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Symposium on Asynchronous Circuits and Systems (ASYNC), April 2011.
(abstract, pdf)
- Jon Russo, Mohammed Amduka, Keith Pendersen, Richard Lethin, Jonathan Springer, Rajit Manohar, Rami Melhem.
Enabling Cognitive Architectures for UAV Mission Planning.
Proceedings of the High Performance Embedded Computing Workshop (HPEC), September 2006.
(abstract, pdf) — Best paper award
- Rajit Manohar and K. Mani Chandy.
Δ-Dataflow Networks for Event Stream Processing.
Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems, November 2004.
(abstract, pdf, ps) — Best paper award
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