Intel and Sandia National Labs Collaborate on Neuromorphic Computing
October 02 2020 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
What’s New: Today, Intel Federal LLC announced a
three-year agreement with Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) to
explore the value of neuromorphic computing for scaled-up
computational problems. Sandia will kick off its research using a
50-million neuron Loihi-based system that was delivered to its
facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This work with Loihi will lay
the foundation for the later phase of the collaboration, which is
expected to include continued large-scale neuromorphic research on
Intel’s upcoming next-generation neuromorphic architecture and the
delivery of Intel’s largest neuromorphic research system to date,
which could exceed more than 1 billion neurons in computational
capacity.
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A close-up shot of an Intel Nahuku board,
each of which contains 8 to 32 Intel Loihi neuromorphic chips.
Intel’s latest neuromorphic system, Pohoiki Beach, is made up of
multiple Nahuku boards and contains 64 Loihi chips. Pohoiki Beach
was introduced in July 2019. (Credit: Tim Herman/Intel
Corporation)
“By applying the high-speed, high-efficiency
and adaptive capabilities of neuromorphic computing architecture,
Sandia National Labs will explore the acceleration of high-demand
and frequently evolving workloads that are increasingly important
for our national security. We look forward to a productive
collaboration leading to the next generation of neuromorphic tools,
algorithms, and systems that can scale to the billion neuron level
and beyond.”
–Mike Davies, director of Intel’s
Neuromorphic Computing Lab
Why It’s Important: While most neuromorphic research to
date has focused on the technology’s promise for edge use cases,
new developments show that neuromorphic computing could also
provide value for large, complex computational problems that
require real-time processing, problem solving, adaptation and
learning.
As a leader in neuromorphic research, Intel is actively
exploring this potential, recently releasing a 100-million neuron
system, Pohoiki Springs, to the Intel Neuromorphic Research
Community (INRC). Initial research conducted on Pohoiki Springs
demonstrates neuromorphic computing can provide up to four orders
of magnitude better energy efficiency for constraint satisfaction –
a standard high-performance computing problem – compared to
state-of-the-art CPUs.
Building on this promise, Intel will deliver multiple
large-scale neuromorphic research systems to Sandia as part of the
Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research
program, which supports U.S. leadership in supercomputing, high-end
computational science and advanced networking for science.
Through the collaboration, Intel and Sandia hope to advance
research in scaled-up neuromorphic computing to determine where
these systems are most effective and how they can provide
real-world value. Additionally, the joint effort should help better
understand how emerging technologies, like neuromorphic computing,
can be utilized as a tool to address some of the country’s most
pressing scientific and engineering challenges. These include
problems in scientific computing, counterproliferation,
counterterrorism, energy, and national security.
“Sandia National Labs has long been at the leading edge of
large-scale computing, using some of the country’s most advanced
high-performance computers to further national security. As the
need for real-time, dynamic data processing becomes more pressing
for this mission, we are exploring entirely new computing
paradigms, such as neuromorphic architectures,” said Craig
Vineyard, principal member of the Technical Staff at Sandia. “Our
work has helped keep Sandia National Labs on the forefront of
computing, and this new endeavor with Intel’s Neuromorphic Research
Group will continue this legacy into the future.”
What Will be Researched: As a member of the INRC since
June 2018, Sandia has explored work related to scientific and
numerical computing. Using neuromorphic research systems in house,
Sandia plans to expand on this research to evaluate the scaling of
a variety of spiking neural network workloads, from physics
modeling to graph analytics to large-scale deep networks. These
sorts of problems are useful for performing scientific simulations
such as modeling particle interactions in fluids, plasmas, and
materials. These physics simulations increasingly need to leverage
advances in optimization, data science, and advanced machine
learning capabilities in order to find solutions. Accordingly,
potential applications for these workloads include simulating the
behavior of materials, finding patterns and relationships in
datasets, and analyzing temporal events from sensor data.
To begin this work, Sandia will run various workloads on a
50-million neuron Loihi-based system and evaluate initial results.
As research progresses, Sandia and Intel will collaborate to scale
the research to larger and more powerful neuromorphic systems,
including systems powered by Intel’s upcoming next-generation
neuromorphic research chip. Sandia will also receive Intel’s
largest neuromorphic research system to-date, which could exceed
more than 1 billion neurons.
More Context: Intel Scales Neuromorphic Research System
to 100 Million Neurons | Neuromorphic Computing (Press Kit) | Intel
Labs (Press Kit)
About Intel
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating
world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches
lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the
design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our
customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the
cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash
the potential of data to transform business and society for the
better. To learn more about Intel’s innovations, go to
newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.
© Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo and other Intel marks
are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other
names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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Alexa Korkos 415-706-5783 alexa.korkos@intel.com
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