Beyond von Neumann, Neuromorphic Computing Steadily Advances

By John Russell

March 21, 2016

Neuromorphic computing – brain inspired computing – has long been a tantalizing goal. The human brain does with around 20 watts what supercomputers do with megawatts. And power consumption isn’t the only difference. Fundamentally, brains ‘think differently’ than the von Neumann architecture-based computers. While neuromorphic computing progress has been intriguing, it has still not proven very practical.

This week neuromorphic computing takes another step forward with a workshop being offered to users from academia, industry and education interested in using two European neuromorphic systems that have been years in development and are coming online for broader use – the BrainScaleS system launching at the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics of Heidelberg University and SpiNNaker, a complementary approach and similarly sized system at the University of Manchester.

Ramping up BrainScaleS and SpiNNaker is an important milestone, strengthening Europe’s position in hardware development for alternative computing. Both projects are part of the European Human Brain Project, originally funded by the European Commission’s Future Emerging Technologies program (2005-2015). The webcast, which will be streamed live on Tuesday, will cover the architecture for both systems and approaches to application development.

BrainScaleS and SpiNNaker take different tacks for modeling neuron activity. One approach is to use traditional analog circuits — like the chips being developed by the BrainScaleS. Analog circuits can be fast and energy and efficient. Conversely, SpiNNaker’s architecture closely links a very large number of digital cores (also fast, and in this case, also energy efficient).

BrainScaleS post-processed wafer containing about 20 million plastic synapses.
BrainScaleS post-processed wafer containing about 20 million plastic synapses.

BrainScaleS’s neuromorphic hardware is based around wafer-scale analog, very large scale integration (VLSI). Each 20-cm-diameter silicon wafer contains 384 chips, each of which implements 128,000 synapses and up to 512 spiking neurons[i]. This gives a total of around 200,000 neurons and 49 million synapses per wafer. These VLSI models operate considerably faster than the biological originals and allow the emulated neural networks to evolve tens-of-thousands times quicker than real time. Put another way, a biological day of learning can be compressed to 100 seconds on the machine.

Leader of the BrainScaleS project, Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Meier (Heidelberg University) explains, “The BrainScaleS system goes beyond the paradigms of a Turing machine and the von Neumann architecture. It is neither executing a sequence of instructions nor is it constructed as a system of physically separated computing and memory units. It is rather a direct, silicon based image of the neuronal networks found in nature, realizing cells, connections and inter-cell communications by means of modern analogue and digital microelectronics.”

Learning – not external programming – is a key guiding principle. Unlike traditional computer architecture in which a structured program explicitly carries out an order of tasks, brains are fundamentally learning machines that turn patterns into programs.

Steve Furber, a professor at the University of Manchester and a co-designer of the ARM chip architecture, leads the SpiNNaker team. SpiNNaker is a contrived acronym derived from Spiking Neural Network Architecture. The machine consists of 57,600 identical 18-core processors, giving it 1,036,800 ARM968 cores in total. The die is fabricated by United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) on a 130 nm CMOS process. Each System-in-Package (SiP) node has an on-board router to form links with its neighbors, as well as 128 Mbyte off-die SDRAM to hold synaptic weights.

SpiNNaker die 800xSpiNNaker, too, is built to mimic the brain’s biological structure and behavior. It will exhibit massive parallelism and resilience to failure of individual components. With more than one million cores, and one thousand simulated neurons per core, SpinNNaker should be capable of simulating one billion neurons in real-time. This equates to a little over one percent of the human brain’s estimated 85 billion neurons.

Rather than implement one particular algorithm, SpiNNaker will be a platform on which different algorithms can be tested. Various types of neural networks can be designed and run on the machine, thus simulating different kinds of neurons and connectivity patterns.

Both BrainScaleS and SpiNNaker architectures will be discussed during the Web-based workshop on March 22, scheduled from 3 pm to 6 pm CET. Together, the systems located in Heidelberg and Manchester comprise the “Neuromorphic Computing Platform” of the Human Brain Project.

Much of the early work on both machines will be basic research on self-organization in neural networks. Other potential applications, for example, are in energy and time efficiency optimization, broadly similar to deep learning technology developed by companies like Google and Facebook for the analysis of large data volumes using conventional high performance computers.

IBM’s Dharmendra Modha
IBM’s Dharmendra Modha

Europe, of course, is hardly alone in pursuing neuromorphic computing. Most prominent in the U.S. is IBM Research’s TrueNorth Chip effort. Dharmendra Modha, IBM fellow and chief scientist for brain-inspired computing, wrote an interesting commentary on the TrueNorth project that traces development of von Neumann architecture based computing and contrasts it with neuromorphic computing approaches: Introducing a Brain-inspired Computer. Though written in 2014, it remains relevant.

TrueNorth chip, introduced in August 2014, is a neuromorphic CMOS chip that consists of 4,096 hardware cores, each one simulating 256 programmable siliconneurons” for a total of just over a million neurons. Each neuron has 256 programmable “synapses” which convey the signals between them. Hence, the total number of programmable synapses is just over 268 million (228). In terms of basic building blocks, its transistor count is 5.4 billion.

Developed under the DARPA SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) project, TrueNorth’s computing power has been characterized as roughly equivalent to the brainpower of a rodent. It also circumvents the von-Neumann-architecture bottlenecks, is very energy-efficient, consumes merely 70 milliwatts, and is capable of 46 billion synaptic operations per second, per watt – literally a synaptic supercomputer in your palm.

BrainScaleS, SpiNNaker, and TrueNorth are just three examples of many ongoing neuromorphic computing projects. Turning them into commercial products or more general purpose computing machines remains a challenge.

Indeed, IBM put together a paper on cognitive computing commercialization and barriers[ii]. “New thinking, not only on the part of programmers and application developers, but also by organizational decision makers who seek to link technological possibilities to market opportunity. While incremental innovation can be achieved on the basis of existing knowledge in well-charted commercial territory, radical innovation entails far greater uncertainty.”

Among the barriers cited were: formulating business models and predicting future revenue to calibrate investment, defining strategy and structure to execute and finally, overcoming communicative and functional boundaries.

Much of the drive to push neuromorphic computing stems from the ongoing decline of Moore’s law, and this excerpt from a 2014 ACM article[iii] still sums circumstances today:

As the long-predicted end of Moore’s Law seems ever more imminent, researchers around the globe are seriously evaluating a profoundly different approach to large-scale computing inspired by biological principles. In the traditional von Neumann architecture, a powerful logic core (or several in parallel) operates sequentially on data fetched from memory. In contrast, “neuromorphic” computing distributes both computation and memory among an enormous number of relatively primitive “neurons,” each communicating with hundreds or thousands of other neurons through “synapses.” Ongoing projects are exploring this architecture at a vastly larger scale than ever before, rivaling mammalian nervous systems, and developing programming environments that take advantage of them. Still, the detailed implementation, such as the use of analog circuits, differs between the projects, and it may be several years before their relative merits can be assessed.

Researchers have long recognized the extraordinary energy stinginess of biological computing, most clearly in a visionary 1990 paper by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)’s Carver Mead that established the term “neuromorphic.” Yet industry’s steady success in scaling traditional technology kept the pressure off.”

[i] “Spiking neural networks (SNNs) fall into the third generation of neural network models, increasing the level of realism in a neural simulation. In addition to neuronal and synaptic state, SNNs also incorporate the concept of time into their operating model. The idea is that neurons in the SNN do not fire at each propagation cycle (as it happens with typical multi-layer perceptron networks), but rather fire only when a membrane potential – an intrinsic quality of the neuron related to its membrane electrical charge – reaches a specific value. When a neuron fires, it generates a signal which travels to other neurons which, in turn, increase or decrease their potentials in accordance with this signal. In the context of spiking neural networks, the current activation level (modeled as some differential equation) is normally considered to be the neuron’s state, with incoming spikes pushing this value higher, and then either firing or decaying over time. Various coding methods exist for interpreting the outgoing spike train as a real-value number, either relying on the frequency of spikes, or the timing between spikes, to encode information.” From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiking_neural_network.

[ii] For more on applications, see IBM paper, Cognitive Computing Commercialization: Boundary Objects for Communication, https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/91714474/Papers/023.IDEMI’13_boundary%20objects_3.4.pdf?cm_mc_uid=86343320971914489086046&cm_mc_sid_50200000=1458418853, Presented at 3rd INT. CONF. ON INTEGRATION OF DESIGN, ENGINEERING & MANAGEMENT FOR INNOVATION, Porto, Portugal, 4-6th September 2013

[iii] Communications of the ACM, Neuromorphic Computing Gets Ready for the (Really) Big Time, http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/6/175183-neuromorphic-computing-gets-ready-for-the-really-big-time/abstract

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire