2012 Preissl Modha TrueNorth Compass Simulator Cognitive Computing
<p>Dec 03, 2012 06:25 PM
 
 
title:  Compass:  A scalable simulator for an architecture for Cognitive Computing
 
9 authors;
 
from IBM Almaden and LBL Natl Lab in Berk.
 
Robert Preissl,  Theodore Wond...  D. Modha.
 
Abstract—Inspired by the function, power, and volume of the
organic brain, we are developing TrueNorth, a novel modu-lar, <b>non-von Neumann, ultra-low power, compact architecture</b>.
TrueNorth consists of a scalable network of neurosynaptic cores,
with each core containing neurons, dendrites, synapses, and
axons. To set sail for TrueNorth, we developed Compass, a
multi-threaded, massively parallel functional simulator and a
parallel compiler that maps a network of long-distance pathways
in the macaque monkey brain to TrueNorth. We demonstrate
near-perfect weak scaling on a 16 rack IBM® Blue Gene®/Q
(262144 CPUs, 256 TB memory), achieving an unprecedented
scale of 256 million neurosynaptic cores containing 65 billion
neurons and 16 trillion synapses running only 388 slower than
real time with an average spiking rate of 8.1 Hz. By using
emerging PGAS communication primitives, we also demonstrate
2 better real-time performance over MPI primitives on a 4 rack
Blue Gene/P (16384 CPUs, 16 TB memory);
 
TrueNorth is the architecture  (the design) of the non-von machine
Compass is a simulator that runs on a Blue GeneQ.
 
it maps a network of long-dist pathways in macaque brain to TrueNorth.
 
<<<  applications are mentioned on page 2 col 1:
(d) demonstrating applications in vision, audition, real-time motor control, and sensor integration, (e) estimatingpower consumption, and (f) hypotheses testing, verification,
and iteration regarding neural codes and function. We have
used Compass to demonstrate numerous applications of the
TrueNorth architecture, such as optic flow, attention mech-anisms, image and audio classification, multi-modal image-audio classification, character recognition, robotic navigation,
and spatio-temporal feature extraction.>>>>   no refs; not discussed in this paper.
 
Compass is a harbinger of an emerging use of today’s
modern supercomputers for midwifing the next generation
of application-specific processors that are increasingly pro-liferating to satisfy a world that is hungering for increased performance and lower power while facing the projected end
of CMOS scaling and increasing obstacles in pushing clock rates ever higher.
 
TN architecture... = TrueNorth;  II  the architecture this is the key para.
somewhat bizarre  simplification of neurobio;  each synapse is one bit only  (connect or not);
 
figure 1 is a NS = neurosynap core
 
<<< see footnote 1 page 1:  
The disparity between neuron and synapse scales arises because the ratio
of neurons to synapses is 1 : 256 in TrueNorth, but is<b> 1 : 10000 in the brain.</b>>>>>
 
 
 
 
 
 
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