IBM NorthPole - Neural Inference at the Frontier of Energy, Space, and Time

NorthPole outperforms all prevalent architectures, even those that use more-advanced technology processes.

Computing, since its inception, has been processor-centric, with memory separated from compute. Inspired by the organic brain and optimized for inorganic silicon, NorthPole is a neural inference architecture that blurs this boundary by eliminating off-chip memory, intertwining compute with memory on-chip, and appearing externally as an active memory chip. NorthPole is a low-precision, massively parallel, densely interconnected, energy-efficient, and spatial computing architecture with a co-optimized, high-utilization programming model.

On the ResNet50 benchmark image classification network, relative to a graphics processing unit (GPU) that uses a comparable 12-nanometer technology process, NorthPole achieves a 25 times higher energy metric of frames per second (FPS) per watt, a 5 times higher space metric of FPS per transistor, and a 22 times lower time metric of latency. Similar results are reported for the Yolo-v4 detection network.

NorthPole outperforms all prevalent architectures, even those that use more-advanced technology processes.

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About the Speakers

Carlos Ortega-Otero

Carlos Ortega-Otero

Sr. Research Staff Member at IBM, specializing in Circuit Design, Neuromorphic Chip Architectures, and Low-Power Circuits. Key member of NorthPole Project.
Fabrizio Ottati

Fabrizio Ottati

AI/ML Processor Engineer at NXP, PhD from Politecnico di Torino. Focuses on event cameras, digital hardware, and deep learning. Maintains Tonic & Expelliarmus.
Jason Eshraghian

Jason Eshraghian

Assistant Professor at UC Santa Cruz, leading UCSC Neuromorphic Computing Group. Focuses on brain-inspired circuits for AI & SNNs. Maintainer of snnTorch.

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