Energy-efficient analog-to-digital conversion in mixed signal circuitry

    公开(公告)号:US11811416B2

    公开(公告)日:2023-11-07

    申请号:US17550493

    申请日:2021-12-14

    IPC分类号: H03M1/34 H03M1/00

    CPC分类号: H03M1/002

    摘要: An apparatus comprises at least one processor and at least one memory including instruction code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to perform a successive approximation analog-to-digital conversion of an analog input, representing a result of multiplication of first and second vectors, to a digital output by determining an upper bound on the result of multiplication of the first and second vectors, identifying, based at least in part on the determined upper bound, at least a portion of the successive approximation analog-to-digital conversion to be skipped, and skipping the identified portion of the successive approximation analog-to-digital conversion.

    Mixed-signal dot product processor with single capacitor per multiplier

    公开(公告)号:US11770130B2

    公开(公告)日:2023-09-26

    申请号:US16808708

    申请日:2020-03-04

    IPC分类号: H03M1/66 H03M1/46

    CPC分类号: H03M1/466

    摘要: A mixed-signal logic processor is provided. The mixed-signal logic processor includes a plurality of mixed-signal multiplier branches. Each of the plurality of mixed-signal multiplier branches has a set of branch-dedicated switches and a single branch-dedicated capacitor. The mixed-signal logic further includes a common switch. The common switch is external and common to each of the plurality of mixed-signal multiplier branches. The mixed-signal logic also includes a first shared branch-external capacitor and a second shared branch-external capacitor. The first and the second shared branch-external capacitors are external to and shared by each of the plurality of mixed-signal multiplier branches. Various settings of the set of switches and the common switch enable various modes of the mixed-signal dot product processor.

    Floating-point computation with threshold prediction for artificial intelligence system

    公开(公告)号:US11853715B2

    公开(公告)日:2023-12-26

    申请号:US17101605

    申请日:2020-11-23

    摘要: A system comprises a floating-point computation unit configured to perform a dot-product operation in accordance with a first floating-point value and a second floating-point value, and detection logic operatively coupled to the floating-point computation unit. The detection logic is configured to compute a difference between fixed-point summations of exponent parts of the first floating-point value and the second floating-point value and, based on the computed difference, detect the presence of a condition prior to completion of the dot-product operation by the floating-point computation unit. In response to detection of the presence of the condition, the detection logic is further configured to cause the floating-point computation unit to avoid performing a subset of computations otherwise performed as part of the dot-product operation. Such techniques serve as a predictor that the avoided subset of computations would have resulted in a dot product of the two floating-point values being below a threshold value.

    Activation function computation for neural networks

    公开(公告)号:US11562235B2

    公开(公告)日:2023-01-24

    申请号:US16797587

    申请日:2020-02-21

    IPC分类号: G06N3/08 G06N3/04

    摘要: A computer-implemented method for improving the efficiency of computing an activation function in a neural network system includes initializing, by a controller, weights in a weight vector associated with the neural network system. Further, the method includes receiving, by the controller, an input vector of input values for computing a dot product with the weight vector for the activation function, which determines an output value of a node in the neural network system. The method further includes predicting, by a rectifier linear unit (ReLU), which computes the activation function, that the output value of the node will be negative based on computing an intermediate value for computing the dot product, and based on a magnitude of the intermediate value exceeding a precomputed threshold value. Further, the method includes, in response to the prediction, terminating, by the ReLU, the computation of the dot product, and outputting a 0 as the output value.

    FLOATING-POINT COMPUTATION WITH THRESHOLD PREDICTION FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM

    公开(公告)号:US20220164163A1

    公开(公告)日:2022-05-26

    申请号:US17101605

    申请日:2020-11-23

    摘要: A system comprises a floating-point computation unit configured to perform a dot-product operation in accordance with a first floating-point value and a second floating-point value, and detection logic operatively coupled to the floating-point computation unit. The detection logic is configured to compute a difference between fixed-point summations of exponent parts of the first floating-point value and the second floating-point value and, based on the computed difference, detect the presence of a condition prior to completion of the dot-product operation by the floating-point computation unit. In response to detection of the presence of the condition, the detection logic is further configured to cause the floating-point computation unit to avoid performing a subset of computations otherwise performed as part of the dot-product operation. Such techniques serve as a predictor that the avoided subset of computations would have resulted in a dot product of the two floating-point values being below a threshold value.

    Bit-serial computation with dynamic frequency modulation for error resiliency in neural network

    公开(公告)号:US11314483B2

    公开(公告)日:2022-04-26

    申请号:US16737440

    申请日:2020-01-08

    IPC分类号: G06F7/523 G06N3/08 G06F7/50

    摘要: A system is provided for error resiliency in a bit serial computation. A delay monitor enforces an overall processing duration threshold for bit-serial processing all iterations for the bit serial computation, while determining a threshold for processing each iteration. At least some iterations correspond to a respective bit in an input bit sequence. A clock generator generates a clock signal for controlling a performance of the iterations. Each of iteration units perform a particular iteration, starting with a Most Significant Bit (MSB) of the input bit sequence and continuing in descending bit significant order, and by selectively increasing the threshold for at least one iteration while skipping from processing at least one subsequent iteration whose iteration-level processing duration exceeds a remaining amount of an overall processing duration for all iterations, responsive to the at least one iteration requiring more time to complete than a current value of the threshold.

    Differential mixed signal multiplier with three capacitors

    公开(公告)号:US11301211B2

    公开(公告)日:2022-04-12

    申请号:US16847505

    申请日:2020-04-13

    IPC分类号: G06F7/44 G06J1/00

    摘要: A differential mixed-signal logic processor is provided. The differential mixed-signal logic processor includes a plurality of mixed-signal multiplier branches for multiplication of an analog value A and a N-bit digital value B. Each of the plurality of mixed-signal multiplier branches include a first capacitor connected across a second capacitor and a third capacitor to provide a differential output across the second and third capacitors. A capacitance of the first capacitor is equal to half a capacitance of the second and third capacitors.