The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 13, 2022
Filed:
Feb. 04, 2020
Macronix International Co., Ltd., Hsinchu, TW;
Hung-Sheng Chang, Taipei, TW;
Han-Wen Hu, Tainan, TW;
Hsiang-Pang Li, Hsinchu County, TW;
Tzu-Hsien Yang, Taoyuan, TW;
I-Ching Tseng, New Taipei, TW;
Hsiang-Yun Cheng, Taoyuan, TW;
Chia-Lin Yang, Taipei, TW;
MACRONIX INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD., Hsinchu, TW;
Abstract
A computation method and a computation apparatus exploiting weight sparsity, adapted for a processor to perform multiply-and-accumulate operations on a memory including multiple input and output lines crossing each other. In the method, weights are mapped to the cells of each operation unit (OU) in the memory. The rows of the cells of each OU are compressed by removing at least one row of the cells each mapped with a weight of 0, and an index including values each indicating a distance between every two rows of the cells including at least one cell mapped with a non-zero weight for each OU is encoded. Inputs are inputted to the input lines corresponding to the rows of each OU excluding the rows of the cells with the weight of 0 according to the index and outputs are sensed from the output lines corresponding to the OU to compute a computation result.