graphcore presenting at project juno machine intelligence showcase

© Graphcore Ltd 2016

Intro for Project Juno Simon Knowles CTO, 18-Oct-16

| accelerated intelligence


Graphcore builds processors for machine intelligence. Intelligence is the capacity for judgement, informed by knowledge, adapted with experience. •  Judgement is computation which delivers probable answers to intractable problems. •  Knowledge is a data model … a probability distribution which summarizes salient features and

correlations in experienced data.


There are 4 basic intelligence processes… •  Learning is condensing data into a probability model. •  Explanation is summarizing the content of the model. •  Prediction is using the model to deduce probable outputs, given inputs. •  Inference is using the model to deduce probable inputs, given outputs. As computation, all are optimization processes … one computing machine can realistically be good at all of them, at least for a given model structure.


The extent of intelligence depends on… •  the capacity and efficiency of the model, •  the amount and relevance of the experience data, •  the efficacy of algorithms for learning, explanation, prediction, and inference, •  the speed and efficiency of processors executing the algorithms. Knowledge models are naturally graphs… •  vertices are features •  edges are correlations/causations


Computation on knowledge models is a new workload, and different… •  Graphs expose huge parallelism •  Sparsity changes memory access patterns •  Static structure allows compiler to do more work •  Model values are low-resolution

The first big application for very high performance!compute on very low precision data?

MSR ResNet-50 CNN 25k maps, 16M activations, 26M parameters


CPU Scalar-centric Designed for office apps Evolved for web serving

GPU Vector-centric Designed for graphics Evolved for HPC

IPU Graph-centric Designed for intelligence

A new processor class will emerge…


Won’t GPUs just get faster?

Kepler K40 4.3Tflop/235W

Maxwell M40 5.8Tflop/250W

Pascal P100 9.5Tflop/300W

1.3x 2 years

1.4x 2 years

100x ~33 years?

Flops/Watt…


Intelligence is the future of all computing. There will be new everything. •  Models will be diverse … NNs will not be all. •  Machines will be diverse … a “master architecture” is no more likely than a “master algorithm”. •  Processors will dominate … target utility of decades in a field that is nascent. Efficient silicon will not be “neuromorphic”… different materials favour different structures; we have not copied animal evolution in locomotion or power.


Graphcore is… •  advanced … design started 2 years ago •  expert … at designing new processors for new markets •  funded … over-subscribed at Series A We will formally announce our mission and support in the next few weeks.

graphcore presenting at project juno machine intelligence showcase

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