Development of Human-Intelligence Systems
using Right-Brain Computing VLSI
（右脳的コンピューティングVLSIを用いた柔軟な認知・理解システムの開発)
Tadashi SHIBATA, *Masakazu YAGI, *Quan-Rong
GU, *Toshihiko YAMASAKI, Makoto OGAWA,Daisuke KOBAYASHI
Department of Frontier Informatics, *Department ofElectronic Engineering
The University of Tokyo

Memory of PastExperience

Saliency
Catcher Chip:
detecting objects
in motion

Recognition byAssociation

Visual Input

Seeing and recognizing objects and taking animmediate action is a very natural response ofhumans, or biological systems in general.
However, even for state-of-the supercomputers,this is an extremely difficult task. A digitalcomputer is nothing more than a calculator ofvast capacity, solving any sort of problems interms of sequential numerical computation. The
scheme is very different from the brain
processing. The purpose of our research is todevelop a VLSI system that works like our rightbrains. Namely, the chip recognizes the object,
not by computation, but by association with theexperience in the past. It recalls the maximumlikelihood event in the past memory in an
immediate response to the input. Since such
association is carried out by fully-parallel on-chipprocessing, the response is extremely fast even at
low-powers of operation. If such a powerful
associative function is utilized in combination
with the logic processing capability of aconventional digital CPU chip, human-like
intelligent systems would be materialized. This issomehow analogous to the collaboration of thelogic-intensive left brain and the intuition-driven
right brain in our brains.
21stIn thecentury, we will soon encounter anaging society. What we really need, I believe, is
not the development of sophisticated gamemachines of super virtual reality, but to develop
an electronic system that is capable ofcommunicating with ordinary people and helping
them, and serving the welfare of the sociallydisadvantaged. Our chip will certainly play anessential role in building such systems.
Saturation Operation

Neuron MOS(neuMOS)
Vectrizer Chip:
generating featurevectors

Associative Processor:

High-Density
Matching Cell Arrayfully-parallel maximumlikelihood search engine

Multi-input highfunctionality transistor
mimicking neuron function

Right-brain computing VLSI system for human-intelligent systems

Sella Nasion
Orbitale

By Our System

By Three Expert Dentists

Recognition of anatomical landmarks on a medical X- ray pictures
based on the expertise knowledge of doctors (Simulation experimentsof our hardware recognition algorithm).
Our research includes the following projects
ranging from hardware issues to software issues,
all going to be merged inseparably:●High-density

Processor

low-power

Analog

Associative●General-purpose digital Associative Processors●Analog flash memory technologies for vast

memory storage and associative primitives

Low-Power Subthreshold Operation●Vector representation algorithms and feature

vector generation VLSI’s● Hardware-friendly image recognition algorithms●ASPL(Association Programming Language) for
Circuit example of an associative primitive and measurement results.

combining the right and left brain processing at
the system level