Design, fabrication and evaluation of a 5-inch wafer scale neural network LSI composed on 576 digital neurons

Abstract

A wafer-scale-integration (WSI) neural network has been fabricated and evaluated. 576 digital neurons are integrated and interconnected with each other on a 5-in silicon wafer by using 0.8-μm CMOS. Neural functions are faithfully mapped to binary digital circuits. The 9-bit output and the 8-bit synapse weight of each neuron are variable. A time-sharing digital bus architecture overcomes the disadvantage of digital neuron circuits. This WSI neural network can be connected with a host computer and used for a wide range of artificial neural networks. The 16-city traveling salesman problem could be solved in less than 0.1 s by using this network. This speed was 10 times faster than a Hitachi supercomputer. Larger artificial neural networks can be realized by simply connecting WSIs