Neuromorphic accelerators

A vast array of devices, ranging from industrial robots to self-driven cars or smartphones, require increasingly sophisticated processing of real-world input data (image, voice, radio, ...). Interestingly, hardware neural network accelerators are emerging again as attractive candidate architectures for such tasks. The neural network algorithms considered come from two, largely separate, domains: machine-learning and neuroscience. These neural networks have very different characteristics, so it is unclear which approach should be favored for hardware implementation. Yet, few studies compare them from a hardware perspective. We implement both types of networks down to the layout, and we compare the relative merit of each approach in terms of energy, speed, area cost, accuracy and functionality.