2020 BRN Discussion, page-281

The Akida NSoC is the first in a revolutionary new breed of neuromorphic computing devices. Inspired by the biological function of neurons but engineered on a digital logic process, these spiking neural networks (SNNs) are inherently lower power than traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs). SNN replace the math-intensive convolutions and back-propagation training methods of CNNs with neuron functions and feed-forward training methodologies. BrainChip's research has determined the optimal neuron model and training methods, bringing unprecedented efficiency and accuracy. Each Akida NSoC has effectively 1.2 million neurons and 10 billion synapses, representing 100 times better efficiency than neuromorphic test chips from Intel and IBM. Comparisons to leading CNN accelerator devices show similar performance gains of an order of magnitude better images/second/watt running industry standard benchmarks such as CIFAR-10 with comparable accuracy.