Robots with Intel Inside brains? That’s what Chipzilla has in mind with its Loihi 2 neuromorphic chip, which tries to mimics the human brain.
This is Intel’s stab at creating more intelligent computers that can efficiently discover patterns and associations in data and from that learn to make smarter and smarter decisions.
It’s not a processor in the traditional sense, and it’s aimed at experimentation rather than production use. As you can see from the technical brief [PDF], terdiri dari hingga 128 inti yang masing-masing memiliki hingga 8,192 komponen yang bertindak seperti neuron spiking alami yang saling mengirim pesan dan membentuk jaringan saraf yang menangani masalah tertentu.
Inti juga mengimplementasikan sinapsis yang mengirimkan informasi antar neuron, yang masing-masing dapat mengirimkan lonjakan biner (1 atau 0) atau lonjakan bertingkat (nilai muatan 32-bit).
An overview of the Loihi 2 chip architecture … Source: Intel. Click to enlarge
Each neuron can be assigned a program written using a basic instruction set to perform a task, and the whole thing is directed by six normal CPU cores that run software written in, say, C. There’s also external IO to communicate with other hardware, and interfaces to link multiple Loihi 2 chips together into a mesh as required. There are other features, such as three-factor learning rules, that you should see the technical brief for more details. The previous generation didn’t have graded spikes nor programmable neurons.
The ‘highlights’ of the Loihi 2 per-neuron instruction set … Source: Intel. Click to enlarge
There’s a race to replicate the brain electronically to run powerful AI applications quickly and without making, say, a massive dent in the electric bill. Samsung just said it wants to menempatkan struktur otak mirip manusia dalam sebuah chip. IBM juga mengembangkan perangkat keras dirancang di sekitar otak.
Intel’s latest Loihi is sepuluh kali lebih cepat dibandingkan komponen generasi sebelumnya mengumumkan empat tahun lalu hingga bulan ini, diklaim.
“Loihi 2 is currently a research chip only,” said Garrick Orchard, a research scientist at Intel Labs via email with Pendaftaran. “Its core-based architecture is scalable and could enable future flavors of the chip — when the technology matures — that could have a range of commercial applications spanning data center to edge devices.”
Setiap chip Loihi 2 berpotensi memiliki lebih dari satu juta neuron digital, naik dari 128,000 pada pendahulunya. Sebagai perbandingan, ada sekitar 90 miliar neuron yang saling berhubungan di otak manusia, yang seharusnya memberi Anda gambaran tentang tingkat kecerdasan yang mungkin dicapai dengan perangkat keras ini saat ini.
Neuron digital menghitung secara asinkron secara paralel, dan dapat disesuaikan dengan pemrogramannya. Loihi 2 mendukung maksimal 120 juta sinapsis, dibandingkan dengan lebih dari satu triliun sinapsis di otak manusia, dan memiliki 2.3 miliar transistor dalam ukuran 31 mm.2 die area. According to Intel, its digital circuits run “up to 5000x faster than biological neurons.”
Chip tersebut merupakan contoh awal dari Intel 4 manufacturing node, which is the semiconductor giant’s brand name for its much-delayed 7nm process node, and uses extreme ultraviolet (EUV) to etch the chips. Loihi 1 was made using a 14nm process.
“With Loihi 2 being fabricated with a pre-production version of the Intel 4 process, this underscores the health and progress of Intel 4,” an Intel spokeswoman told us.
Intel, by the way, showed off the wafer of Intel 4 CPU family, code-named Meteor Lake and aimed at desktops and mobile PCs, at a press event in July, the first time it had done so. Chips using that microarchitecture are expected to ship in 2023, hence Loihi 2 is a glimpse of what’s to come manufacturing-wise.
Intel bekerja sama dengan komunitas riset untuk menghasilkan aplikasi untuk Loihi 2. Pendahulunya sudah terbiasa melakukannya membuat sistem untuk mengidentifikasi bau, mengelola lengan robot, dan mengoptimalkan penjadwalan kereta api.
There are no projects underway with Loihi 2 yet, though partners that worked with the original Loihi “have communicated their excitement for new capabilities within Loihi 2,” Orchard said.
One such partner is America’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is using the first-gen Loihi chip as an artificial brain to memahami manfaat tidur.
An open-source programming framework called Lava was introduced alongside Loihi 2 with which developers can write AI applications that can be implemented in the chip’s neural network. The underlying tools will also support Robotic Operating System (ROS), TensorFlow, Pytorch and other frameworks.
Kerangka kerja Lava tersedia untuk Download di Github.
This neuromorphic hardware will be available to researchers via Intel’s Neuromorphic Research Cloud. The available components includes the Oheo Gulch board, which includes a single-socket Loihi 2 linked to an FPGA. A system code-named Kapoho Point with eight Loihi 2 chips will be available soon. ®
Teman-teman kita selama di Platform Selanjutnya memiliki lebih banyak analisis dan info tentang Loihi 2 di sini.
Sumber: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/10/01/artificial_brain_intel/
