An Analog Self-Organizing Neural Network Chip

A design for a fully analog version of a self-organizing feature map neural network has been completed. Several parts of this design are in fabrication. The feature map algorithm was modified to accommodate circuit solutions to the various computations required. Performance effects were measured by simulating the design as part of a frontend for a speech recognition system. Circuits are included to implement both activation computations and weight adaption or learning. External access to the analog weight values is provided to facilitate weight initialization, testing and static storage. This fully analog implementation requires an order of magnitude less area than a comparable digital/analog hybrid version developed earlier.