IBM in early April in Physical Design annual International conference of the California (International Symposium on Physical Design 2016, ISPD) unveiled its according to the structure Design of the human brain nerve type mixed signal chips TrueNorth status, including its chip architecture, software evaluation board array, system reference Design and ecological system.
During ISPD, IBM's brain-like computer program, talk about the company expected the company to become a household name, support including super wisdom Internet of things (IoT) to super intelligent vehicles, camera, unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs), medical devices, and of course, super wisdom super computer application and so on.
IBM's low-power nerve type Circuit designers (Low - Power Neuromorphic Circuit Designer) Filipp Akopyan in An article entitled "IBM TrueNorth tool design and process: one contains millions of Neurons of ultra-low Power consumption Chip Programmable nerve pattern (An Ultra - Low Power Programmable Neurosynaptic Chip with 1 - m letters Neurons)", introduced the related hardware and software and support the ecosystem of the company.
The IBM public nerve type chip on human brain computer program
IBM's type of chip architecture of the human brain, is developed through the study of human brain cortex neurons
Akopyan, said IBM's goal is to network TrueNorth chip Edge (Edge - of - the - Net) and huge amounts of Data (Big Data) solution, support with ultra-low power consumption component processing a large number of real-time Data ©¤ ©¤ the nerve type chip containing 5.4 billion transistors, power consumption is only 700 milliWatts (milliWatts).
"Today we are using the mobile devices make a lot of information, should be managed by the cloud computer, but TrueNorth can be configured on the edge of the network, data stream feed-in and processing, transmitted to the cloud and the only important projects;" Akopyan pointed out: "high power of the computing resources is the wrong direction, they had better to be down to a biological level."
IBM to nerve type core (neuromorphic core) ©¤ ©¤ namely a batch and dendrites (dendrites, input) and axon neurons (axons, output) link ©¤ ©¤ as a starting point, any one neuron can transmit messages ©¤ ©¤ called spike wave (spike) ©¤ ©¤ to any other neurons as 1 or 0 (voltage pulse or spike wave).
Chip neurons can transmit/receive messages from any other chips neurons ©¤ ©¤ this is better communication method, because sparse local communication not only like the brain by it, and can achieve the minimum signal delay. Any neurons can also send messages to the outside of the chip, even outside the circuit boards of neurons, but the delay will be higher.
The IBM public nerve type chip on human brain computer program
TrueNorth wafer specification
TrueNorth can achieve 70 milliwatts of power consumption is the key to using asynchronous logic (asynchronous logic), unless the entire chip is a specific neurons are open during the application in the communication with other neurons, its power consumption is zero. On the structure, it contains 5.4 billion transistors using sync framework, might consume 50 ~ 100 watts, but asynchronous architecture makes the power consumption to a minimum. In order to achieve any interconnected neurons in structure, chip has a large vertical and horizontal pin switch (crossbar switch).
The unique chip design tools
IBM from the many tools to design EDA vendor TrueNorth chips, including Cadence, Synopsys and Spice, but also have to develop EDA tools to support of synchronization, parts of the common design of asynchronous architecture. By IBM developed tool named CoSim, as the name implies, this tool can make the different parts of the chip, synchronous joint simulation on different tools.
TrueNorth "we use different simulators to design the different parts of the chip," Akopyan said: "our CoSim tools can provide the hybrid processes, to support the customization TrueNorth simulation together." IBM development achievement, is a 64 x 64, a total of 4096 forms the core of the central array, each core. There are 256 neurons and 64 k memory synapse; There are 256 million synapses, the entire chip 5.4 billion transistors, power consumption is only 70 milliwatts.
In addition those neural pattern core can be unlimited combinations, let the future of nerve pattern of physical memory expanded into a larger chip; The current IBM TrueNorth low-power chips using Samsung 28 nanometers process. To potential customers (from the Internet of things device manufacturers to the military uavs, super computer manufacturers) show TrueNorth function of chips, IBM built single chip circuit board, also has with 16 pieces of 48 circuit boards, chassis, and it contains 16 TrueNorth single chip circuit board.
Future IBM also plans to create 64, 256, 1024, equipped with 4096 TrueNorth chip circuit board, finally a kind of function can be up to 1% of the human brain capacity. And one for IBM TrueNorth software development and application of urban ecosystem, more information can be linked TrueNorth official website; Click the following links can also see more original IBM in ISPD presentation images.
