Hardware acceleration for neuromorphic computing: An evolving view

The rapid growth of computing capacity of modern microprocessors enables the wide adoption of machine learning and neural network models. The ever-increasing demand for performance, combining with the concern on power budget, motivated the recent research on hardware acceleration for these learning algorithms. A wide spectrum of hardware platforms have been extensively studied, from conventional heterogeneous computing systems to emerging nanoscale systems. In this paper, we will review the ongoing efforts at Evolutionary Intelligence Laboratory (www.ei-lab.org) about hardware acceleration for neuromorphic computing and machine learning. Realizations on various platforms such as FPGA, on-chip heterogeneous processors, and memristor-based ASIC designs will be explored. An evolving view of the accelerator de-signs for learning algorithms will be also presented.