A 22nm 3.5TOPS/W Flexible Micro-Robotic Vision SoC with 2MB eMRAM for Fully-on-Chip Intelligence

Qirui Zhang, Hyochan An, Zichen Fan, Zhehong Wang, Ziyun Li, Guanru Wang, Hun-Seok Kim, David Blaauw, Dennis Sylvester

20222022 IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits (VLSI Technology and Circuits)16 citationsDOI

Abstract

We present a highly flexible micro-robotic vision SoC featuring a hybrid Processing Element (PE) for efficient processing of both Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and non-CNN vision tasks with 2MB embedded MRAM for retentive fully-on-chip weight storage. Fabricated in 22nm, the design achieves 0.22nJ/pix for Harris corner detection (a non-CNN vision task) and 3.5TOPS/W (INT16) for CNN, a 60% efficiency improvement over state-of-the-art NVM-based NN ASICs.

Topics & Concepts

Convolutional neural networkComputer scienceSystem on a chipMachine visionChipArtificial intelligenceTask (project management)Embedded systemComputer hardwareEngineeringTelecommunicationsSystems engineeringCCD and CMOS Imaging SensorsAdvanced Memory and Neural ComputingNeuroscience and Neural Engineering