2021 BRN Discussion, page-14934

Hi geordie,

We have looked at Hailo a couple of times in the last couple of years.

I don't think we can take Hailo lightly. I think their neuron structure is the nearest to Akida that I've seen.

AKIDA NEURON:




They have several NN patent applications all filed on 4 April 2017:

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/072334640/publication/US2020285950A1?q=nftxt%20%3D%20%22hailo%22%20AND%20nftxt%20%3D%20%22neural%20network%22








However, although they disavow von neumann, they have excluded the possibility of STDP by using a timing signal (171, 177 ...) for the neuron operation. Recall from Simon Thorp's video the other day how crucial the spike timing is.

[0112] A second feature is the control plane and the strict separation of the control fabric from the data fabric which enables aggregation of control as well as very ‘lean’ or ‘slim’ control of the entire data fabric (i.e. data plane). The control plane is separate from the data plane and thus it can be aggregated in the sense that a large number of compute units are controlled using relatively few control lines, e.g., by a single control line in some cases. For example, considering the multiply circuits in the PEs, a single control signal initiates the multiply operation in thousands of PEs at the same time. Further, the programmability of the control plane is separate from the programmability of the data plane. The massive parallelism of the data fabric of the NN core is matched by the lean structure of the control plane.

[0113] This is in contrast to the typical prior art approach of in-band control where control signals are applied in close proximity to the data which require the replication of the control signals by the number of compute elements. Furthermore, out-of-band control is in contrast to traditional microcontroller based techniques as it is not a Von-Neuman machine based technique.

https://videos.insa-rennes.fr/video/0294-colloque-gdr-soc2-210610-ia-simon-thorpe/64cd3da00877aa69e10d6ac53873ac3153d6eae4a8812d22c9007c4f1bbcb1ed/

Hailo - pie without sauce!?