HiPNeT-1: A Highly Pipelined Architecture for Neural Network Training

TitleHiPNeT-1: A Highly Pipelined Architecture for Neural Network Training
Publication TypeTechnical Report
Year of Publication1991
AuthorsAsanović, K., Kingsbury B., Morgan N., & Wawrzynek J.
Other Numbers665
Abstract

Current artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms require extensive computational resources. However, they exhibit massive fine-grained parallelism and require only moderate arithmetic precision. These properties make possible custom VLSI implementations for high performance, low cost systems. This paper describes one such system, a special purpose digital VLSI architecture to implement neural network training in a speech recognition application.The network algorithm has a number of atypical features. These include: shared weights, sparse activation, binary inputs, and a serial training input stream. The architecture illustrates a number of design techniques to exploit these algorithm-specific features. The result is a highly pipelined system which sustains a learning rate of one pattern per clock cycle. At a clock rate of 20MHz each "neuron" site performs 200 million connection updates per second. Multiple such neurons can be integrated onto a modestly sized VLSI die.

URLhttp://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/ftp/global/pub/techreports/1991/tr-91-035.pdf
Bibliographic Notes

ICSI Technical Report TR-91-035

Abbreviated Authors

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

ICSI Publication Type

Technical Report