Think like a human brain. This magic chip developed by Zhejiang University can do these things.
Release date: August 28, 2019
To make machines have “wisdom” like humans, a smart “brain” is essential. A few days ago, Darwin 2, a pulse neural network-like brain chip developed by Zhejiang University, was released in Hangzhou. Hangzhou Dianzi University and Huawei Academia Sinica participated in the chip development, algorithm and application scenario research respectively. The chip provides more possibilities for installing “human brain” on machines.
The human brain is full of neurons, which are connected with each other through synapses, transmitting pulse signals, helping human beings to complete thinking and expression, and transmitting joy and sadness.
The structure of brain-like chip is like human brain, which is a synaptic transmission structure. There are many processors and communication systems on a small chip, which play the role of “neurons” and “synapses” and transmit and process information in the form of nerve impulses.
“Traditional artificial intelligence chips can only produce results after accurate calculation through massive data, which is more energy-consuming. Relatively speaking, brain-like chips have lower power consumption and stronger scalability, which is likely to be an important breakthrough direction for the development of next-generation computing technology and next-generation artificial intelligence. ” Associate Professor Ma De, the backbone of the research team from the School of Computer Science and Technology of Zhejiang University and the Frontier Science Center of Brain-Computer Integration of the Ministry of Education, said.
In the laboratory of CCNT (Advanced Computing and System Laboratory), School of Computer Science, Zhejiang University, the reporter saw the newly released Darwin 2. This cube chip, which is slightly larger than the fingernail, is made by 55 nm technology. It looks almost the same as the common chip, but the inside of the chip is very knowledgeable.
As early as 2015, the team developed a brain-like chip “Darwin 1”, which can simulate 2048 neurons and up to 4 million synapses of an organism. “Darwin 2 has 150,000 neurons and more than 10 million synapses per single chip. Through connection expansion, it can also build a brain like computing system of millions or even tens of millions of neurons.” Dr. Zhu Xiaolei, a member of the chip team, said.
In addition to the chip, the team also developed the Darwin microkernel operating system and provided a brain-like development environment to promote the chip to the application field.
At the application level, “Darwin 2” is mainly oriented to smart Internet of Things applications. The reporter learned that according to the characteristics of chip architecture, Huawei Academia Sinica designed an efficient pulse neural network algorithm for speech recognition applications, realized the business demonstration of real-time voice control, and cooperated with Zhejiang University in the research of video business application scenarios. In addition, the team has also independently developed many applications such as gesture recognition, image recognition and EEG recognition, and the power consumption is more than 2 orders of magnitude lower than that of traditional computing chips.
In the laboratory, the researchers waved their arms and the curtains closed automatically. Through the brain “meditation”, you can control the sound volume of the sound; By giving orders by voice, the game tank can advance and retreat freely … All of these are due to the “magic brain” of Darwin 2.
The researchers said that the research and development of Darwin 2, a brain-like chip, was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Double Brain Program of Zhejiang University. At present, Zhejiang University has joined hands with Zhijiang Laboratory and other units to start the research and development of the next generation of Darwin-like brain chips.
(Source: Zhejiang Online Website)