Single Flux Quantum Based Ultrahigh Speed Spiking Neuromorphic Processor Architecture

Abstract: Artificial neural networks inspired by brain operations can improve the possibilities of solving complex problems more efficiently. Today's computing hardware, on the other hand, is mainly based on von Neumann architecture and CMOS technology, which is inefficient at implementing neural networks. For the first time, we propose an ultrahigh speed, spiking neuromorphic processor architecture built upon single flux quantum (SFQ) based artificial neurons (JJ-Neuron). Proposed architecture has the potential to provide higher performance and power efficiency over the state of the art including CMOS, memristors and nanophotonics devices. JJ-Neuron has the ultrafast spiking capability, trainability with commodity design software even after fabrication and compatibility with commercial CMOS and SFQ foundry services. We experimentally demonstrate the soma part of the JJ-Neuron for various activation functions together with peripheral SFQ logic gates. Then, the neural network is trained for the IRIS dataset and we have shown 100% match with the results of the offline training with 1.2x${10}^{10}$ synaptic operations per second (SOPS) and 8.57x${10}^{11}$ SOPS/W performance and power efficiency, respectively. In addition, scalability for ${10}^{18}$ SOPS and ${10}^{17}$ SOPS/W is shown which is at least five orders of magnitude more efficient than the state of the art CMOS circuits and one order of magnitude more efficient than estimations of nanophotonics-based architectures.