Reduced power consumption analog or hybrid mac neural network

Abstract

Power efficient performance may be implemented in a hardware accelerator (e.g., a neural processor) comprising hybrid or analog multiply and accumulate (MAC) processing elements (PEs). For example, power consumption may be reduced in neural networks with a rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation layer. A hybrid or analog MAC circuit may be configured with a look-ahead sign detector to dynamically stop computations prior to completion, for example, based on detection of a negative value, which a ReLU activation layer may (e.g., subsequently) convert to zero. The sign of a value may be indicated by a most significant bit (MSB). A controller may provide power and/or clock cycles to an analog to digital converter (ADC) to determine a sign of a value being computed. The sign may be used to selectively complete computations for positive values and selectively terminate computations for negative values, thereby reducing power consumption of the MAC circuit.