All-Spin Bayesian Neural Networks
Kezhou Yang, Akul Malhotra, Sen Lu, Abhronil Sengupta
Abstract
Probabilistic machine learning enabled by the Bayesian formulation has recently gained significant attention in the domain of automated reasoning and decision-making. While impressive strides have been recently made to scale up the performance of deep Bayesian neural networks, they have been primarily standalone software efforts without any regard to the underlying hardware implementation. In this article, we propose an “all-spin” Bayesian neural network where the underlying spintronic hardware provides a better match to the Bayesian computing models. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first exploration of a Bayesian neural hardware accelerator enabled by emerging post-CMOS technologies. We develop an experimentally calibrated device-circuit-algorithm cosimulation framework and demonstrate 24× reduction in energy consumption against an iso-network CMOS baseline implementation.