Patent ID: 11947359
Assignee: MICRON TECHNOLOGY, INC.
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A lidar sensor, comprising:
a laser pulse generator;
a directional control;
a beam steerer coupled to the laser pulse generator and the directional control to project laser pulses in different directions;
a light sensor;
a light receiver configured to direct, to the light sensor, laser pulses reflected back to the lidar sensor;
timing circuitry configured to determine a time gap between a respective laser pulse projected by the beam steerer and the respective laser pulse reflected back to the light sensor;
memory configured to store a lidar image and an artificial neural network, wherein the lidar image identifies, based on inputs from the directional control and the timing circuitry, attributes of a plurality of points that reflect laser pulses back to the light sensor;
an inference engine configured to use the artificial neural network to analyze the lidar image and generate inference results; and
a host interface configured to provide the inference results to a computer system of a vehicle;
wherein the memory and the inference engine are configured on at least one first integrated circuit die; and the light sensor is configured on a second integrated circuit die;
wherein the at least one first integrated circuit die and the second integrated circuit die are enclosed within a same integrated circuit package;
wherein the memory and the inference engine in the at least one first integrated circuit die and the light sensor in the second integrated circuit die are connected via at least through-silicon vias;
wherein the memory includes a first predefined region configured to store a model of the artificial neural network, a second predefined region configured to receive neuron inputs, and a third predefined region configured to store neuron outputs;
wherein generation of the neuron outputs in the third predefined region is configured according to the model in response to the lidar image being written into the second predefined region;
wherein the inference engine includes a memristor crossbar array configured to perform matrix multiplication and accumulation operations; and
wherein memristors in the crossbar array are configured to store parameters of the artificial neural network; and the multiplication and accumulation operations are performed by the memristors converting voltages on wordlines of the crossbar array into currents summed in bitlines of the crossbar array.