Developments in Digital VLSI Design for Artificial Neural Networks

TitleDevelopments in Digital VLSI Design for Artificial Neural Networks
Publication TypeTechnical Report
Year of Publication1990
AuthorsMorgan, N., Asanović K., Kingsbury B., & Wawrzynek J.
Other Numbers629
Abstract

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been heralded as a form of massive parallelism that may significantly advance the state of the art in machine intelligence and perception. While these expectations may or may not be realistic, this class of algorithms has already been useful for difficult problems in signal processing and pattern recognition over the last 25 years. However, for extension to a wider class of problems, a key requirement is the parallel hardware implementation of such systems, since ANN implementation on conventional Von Neumann machines is often prohibitively slow. While the ANN mainstream has focused on analog VLSI ANNs, some projects have shown the potential of a fully digital approach. We report here on progress in developing a methodology for digital ANN design, including a new object-oriented CAD interface, and a set of ANN-specific library cells. A new measure for efficiency of silicon ANNs is also described.

URLhttp://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/techreports/tr-90-065.pdf
Bibliographic Notes

ICSI Technical Report TR-90-065

Abbreviated Authors

N. Morgan, K. Asanovic, B. Kingsbury, and J. Wawrzynek

ICSI Publication Type

Technical Report