A 45nm CMOS neuromorphic chip with a scalable architecture for learning in networks of spiking neurons

Efforts to achieve the long-standing dream of realizing scalable learning algorithms for networks of spiking neurons in silicon have been hampered by (a) the limited scalability of analog neuron circuits; (b) the enormous area overhead of learning circuits, which grows with the number of synapses; and (c) the need to implement all inter-neuron communication via off-chip address-events. In this work, a new architecture is proposed to overcome these challenges by combining innovations in computation, memory, and communication, respectively, to leverage (a) robust digital neuron circuits; (b) novel transposable SRAM arrays that share learning circuits, which grow only with the number of neurons; and (c) crossbar fan-out for efficient on-chip inter-neuron communication. Through tight integration of memory (synapses) and computation (neurons), a highly configurable chip comprising 256 neurons and 64K binary synapses with on-chip learning based on spike-timing dependent plasticity is demonst...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CICC
• Authors: Jae-sun Seo, Bernard Brezzo, Yong Liu, Benjamin D. Parker, Steven K. Esser, Robert K. Montoye, Bipin Rajendran, José A. Tierno, Leland Chang, Dharmendra S. Modha, Daniel J. Friedman
• Keywords: CICC 2011, Learning Circuits, Neuron Circuits, Power Efficiency