NOCS 2012
Keynote Talk - Steve Furber
Biologically-Inspired Massively-Parallel Computing
Steve Furber - University of Manchester
Abstract:
The SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network Architecture) project aims to deliver a massively-parallel computing platform for modelling large-scale systems of spiking neurons in biological real time. The architecture is based around a Multi-Processor System-on-Chip that incorporates 18 ARM processor subsystems and is packaged with a 128Mbyte SDRAM to form the basic computing node, employing a GALS (Globally-Asynchronous Locally-Synchronous) Network-on-Chip interconnect infrastructure. A self-timed application-specific packet-switched communications fabric carries neural "spike" packets between processors on the same or different packages to allow the system to be extended up to a million processors, at which scale the machine has the capacity to model in the region of 1% of the human brain.
Biography:
Steve Furber is the ICL Professor of Computer Engineering in the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. He received his B.A. degree in Mathematics in 1974 and his Ph.D. in Aerodynamics in 1980 from the University of Cambridge, England. From 1980 to 1990 he worked at Acorn Computers Ltd and was a principal designer of the BBC Microcomputer and the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor. At Manchester in 1990 he leads the Advanced Processor Technologies group with research interests in multicore computing, low-power Systems-on-Chip and neural systems engineering. Steve is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the IEEE. In 2012 he was made a Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA) Fellow Award honoree.