Programmable Energy-Efficient Analog Multilayer Perceptron Architecture Suitable for Future Expansion to Hardware Accelerators

A programmable, energy-efficient analog hardware implementation of a multilayer perceptron (MLP) is presented featuring a highly programmable system that offers the user the capability to create an MLP neural network hardware design within the available framework. In addition to programmability, this implementation provides energy-efficient operation via analog/mixed-signal design. The configurable system is made up of 12 neurons and is fabricated in a standard 130 nm CMOS process occupying approximately 1 mm2 of on-chip area. The system architecture is analyzed in several different configurations with each achieving a power efficiency of greater than 1 tera-operations per watt. This work offers an energy-efficient and scalable alternative to digital configurable neural networks that can be built upon to create larger networks capable of standard machine learning applications, such as image and text classification. This research details a programmable hardware implementation of an MLP that achieves a peak power efficiency of 5.23 tera-operations per watt while consuming considerably less power than comparable digital and analog designs. This paper describes circuit elements that can readily be scaled up at the system level to create a larger neural network architecture capable of improved energy efficiency.