Patent ID: 11966833
Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A computing unit for accelerating a neural network, comprising:
an input unit that includes a digital-to-analog conversion unit that is configured to receive a digital input vector and convert the digital input vector into a first analog signal that is provided as an input to a first interconnected analog crossbar circuit of a plurality of analog crossbar circuits;
an output unit that includes an analog-to-digital conversion unit that is configured to receive as an input a second analog signal from the output of a last interconnected analog crossbar circuit of a plurality of analog crossbar circuits and convert the second analog signal into a digital output vector; and
a plurality of interconnected analog crossbar circuits that include the first interconnected analog crossbar circuit and the last interconnected crossbar circuits, wherein each interconnected analog crossbar circuit of the plurality of interconnected analog crossbar circuits corresponds to a particular layer of the neural network, wherein each interconnected analog crossbar circuit includes a plurality of crosspoints, wherein each crosspoint stores a weight of a plurality of weights associated with a layer of the neural network to which the interconnected analog crossbar circuit corresponds,
wherein one or more of the interconnected analog crossbar circuits is configured to receive as an input a third analog signal from another interconnected analog crossbar circuit of the plurality of interconnected crossbar circuits and perform one or more operations on the third analog signal based on the matrix weights stored by the crosspoints of the interconnected analog crossbar circuit that received the third analog signal to generate an output analog signal, and
wherein the computing unit does not include any other analog-to-digital conversion units that generate a digital output based on an input that includes an analog signal output by an interconnected analog crossbar circuit other than the analog-to-digital conversion unit of the output unit.