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A CMOS Probabilistic Computing Chip With In-situ hardware Aware Learning

Published: April 18, 2025 | arXiv ID: 2504.14070v3

By: Jinesh Jhonsa , William Whitehead , David McCarthy and more

Potential Business Impact:

Makes computers solve hard problems faster and smaller.

Business Areas:
Semiconductor Hardware, Science and Engineering

This paper demonstrates a probabilistic bit physics inspired solver with 440 spins configured in a Chimera graph, occupying an area of 0.44 mm^2. Area efficiency is maximized through a current-mode implementation of the neuron update circuit, standard cell design for analog blocks pitch-matched to digital blocks, and a shared power supply for both digital and analog components. Process variation related mismatches introduced by this approach are effectively mitigated using a hardware aware contrastive divergence algorithm during training. We validate the chip's ability to perform probabilistic computing tasks such as modeling logic gates and full adders, as well as optimization tasks such as MaxCut, demonstrating its potential for AI and machine learning applications.

Page Count
3 pages

Category
Computer Science:
Hardware Architecture