Systems and processes for organizing and controlling multiple matrix processor circuits

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is an increasingly important sector of the computer industry. However, artificial intelligence is extremely computationally intensive field such that it can be expensive, time consuming, and energy consuming. Fortunately, many of the calculations required for artificial intelligence can be performed in parallel such that specialized processors can greatly increase computational performance. Specifically, artificial intelligence generally requires large numbers of matrix operations to implement neural networks such that specialized Matrix Processor circuits can improve performance. But a neural network is more than a collection of matrix operations; it is a set of specifically coordinated matrix operations with complex data dependencies. Without proper coordination, Matrix Processor circuits may end up idle or spending large amounts of time loading in different weight matrix data. Thus this document discloses apparatus and methods for organizing and controlling multiple Matrix Processor circuits efficiently.