Live Demonstration: Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling for Neuromorphic Many-Core Systems

We present a dynamic voltage and frequency scaling technique within SoCs for per-core power management: the architecture allows for individual, self triggered performance-level scaling of the processing elements (PEs)within less than 100ns. This technique enables each core to adjust its local supply voltage and frequency depending on its current computational load. A test chip has been implemented in 28nm CMOS technology, as prototype of the SpiNNaker2 neuromorphic many core system, containing 4 PEs which are operational within the range of 1.1V down to 0.7V at frequencies from 666MHz down to 100MHz; The particular domain area of this application specific processor is real-time neuromorphics. Using a standard benchmark-the synfire chain-we show that the total power consumption can be reduced by 45%, with 85% baseline power reduction and a 30% reduction of energy per neuron and synapse computation, all while maintaining biological real-time operation.