AI Chip Tests Binary Approach

Imec said at its annual event here that it is prototyping a deep-learning inference chip using single-bit precision. The research institute hopes to gather data over the next year on the effectiveness for client devices of the novel data type and architecture--either a processor-in-memory (PIM) or an analog memory fabric. The PIM architecture, explored by academics for decades, is gaining popularity for data-intensive machine-learning algorithms. Startup Mythic and IBM Research are designing two of the most prominent efforts in the field. Many academics are experimenting with 1- to 4-bit data types to trim the heavy memory requirements for deep learning.