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.

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.
Social share preview for IBM NorthPole - Neural inference at the frontier of energy, space, and time

Upcoming Workshops

No workshops are currently scheduled. Check back soon for new events!

Are you an expert in a neuromorphic topic? We invite you to share your knowledge with our community. Hosting a workshop is a great way to engage with peers and share your work.

Inspired? Share your work.

Share your expertise with the community by speaking at a workshop, student talk, or hacking hour. It’s a great way to get feedback and help others learn.

Related Workshops

Building Neuromorphic Applications Using Talamo

Building Neuromorphic Applications Using Talamo

This offers a sneak-peek into Innatera’s technology stack allowing application development from scratch and deploying it on mixed-signal neuromorphic hardware.

C-DNN and C-Transformer: mixing ANNs and SNNs for the best of both worlds

C-DNN and C-Transformer: mixing ANNs and SNNs for the best of both worlds

Join us for a talk by Sangyeob Kim, Postdoctoral researcher at KAIST, on designing efficient accelerators that mix SNNs and ANNs.

Accelerating Inference and Training at the Edge

Accelerating Inference and Training at the Edge

Join us for a talk by Maxence Ernoult, Research Scientist at Rain, on accelerating inference and training at the edge.