SEMINAR:“AI-on-chip” with Bio-inspired Memory Technologies

Speaker: Prof. Themis Prodromakis, University of Edinburgh

Title:''AI-on-chip” with Bio-inspired Memory Technologies

Date/Time: 22 November 2022 / 13.40- 14:30

Location: FENS G035 

Abstract:Artificial Intelligence (AI) is destined to transform our society, affecting every aspect of our lives. However, a key bottleneck towards the proliferation of the technology is the lack of efficient hardware that will allow us to embed AI everywhere – well beyond the cloud’s reach. Up until now, the processing and storage of data in electronics has relied on assemblies of vast numbers of transistors that have got smaller and smaller to meet the increasing demands of modern societies, but have nowadays reached their physical limits. A novel nanoelectronic technology, known as the memristor, proclaims to hold the key to a new era in electronics and AI, being both smaller and simpler in form than transistors, low- energy, and with the ability to retain data by ‘remembering’ the amount of charge that has passed through them – akin to the behaviour of synaptic connections in the human brain. In this keynote Professor Prodromakis will present the attributes of memristive technologies that make this emerging technology attractive for a variety of applications – ranging from bio-inspired memories to compressing sensing and even embedding “AI on chip”.

Bio: Themis holds the Regius Chair of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh and is Director of the Centre for Electronics Frontiers. His work focuses on developing metal-oxide Resistive Random-Access Memory technologies and related applications and is leading an interdisciplinary team comprising 30 researchers with expertise ranging from materials process development to electron devices and circuits and systems for embedded applications He holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies and a Royal Society Industry Fellowship. He is an Adjunct Professor at UTS Australia, visiting Professor at the Department of Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics at Tsinghua University, and Honorary Fellow at Imperial College London. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the British Computer Society, the IET and the Institute of Physics and is also Senior Member of the IEEE. He served as the Director of the Lloyds Register Foundation International Consortium for Nanotechnology and Co-Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Machine Intelligence for Nano- Electronic Devices and Systems (MINDS). In 2015, he established ArC Instruments Ltd that delivers high-performance testing infrastructure for automating characterisation of novel nanodevices in over 21 countries and in 2019 he founded SoneT.ai that is building new power-efficient AI hardware solutions. His contributions in memristive technologies and applications have brought this emerging technology one step closer to the electronics industry for which he was recognised as a 2021 Blavatnik Award UK Honoree in Physical Sciences and Engineering.