METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DISTRIBUTED AND COOPERATIVE COMPUTATION IN ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

Abrégé

An apparatus and method are described for distributed and cooperative computation in artificial neural networks. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: an input/output (I/O) interface; a plurality of processing units communicatively coupled to the I/O interface to receive data for input neurons and synaptic weights associated with each of the input neurons, each of the plurality of processing units to process at least a portion of the data for the input neurons and synaptic weights to generate partial results; and an interconnect communicatively coupling the plurality of processing units, each of the processing units to share the partial results with one or more other processing units over the interconnect, the other processing units using the partial results to generate additional partial results or final results. The processing units may share data including input neurons and weights over the shared input bus.

Classes IPC  ?

• G06F 17/15 - Correlation function computation
• G06N 3/063 - Physical realisation, i.e. hardware implementation of neural networks, neurons or parts of neurons using electronic means
• G06F 12/0862 - Addressing of a memory level in which the access to the desired data or data block requires associative addressing means, e.g. caches with prefetch
• G06F 12/0875 - Addressing of a memory level in which the access to the desired data or data block requires associative addressing means, e.g. caches with dedicated cache, e.g. instruction or stack
• G06N 3/04 - Architecture, e.g. interconnection topology