US 12,117,866 B2
SOC for operating plural NPUS according to plural clock signals having multi-phases
Lok Won Kim, Yongin-si (KR); Jin Gun Song, Seongnam-si (KR); and Seong Jin Lee, Seongnam-si (KR)
Assigned to DEEPX CO., LTD., Seongnam-si (KR)
Filed by DEEPX CO., LTD., Seongnam-si (KR)
Filed on Sep. 25, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/473,746.
Claims priority of application No. 10-2023-0111208 (KR), filed on Aug. 24, 2023.
Prior Publication US 2024/0012445 A1, Jan. 11, 2024
Int. Cl. G06F 1/08 (2006.01); G06F 15/80 (2006.01)
CPC G06F 1/08 (2013.01) [G06F 15/80 (2013.01)] 16 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system-on-chip (SoC) comprising:
a semi-conductor substrate;
a first circuitry, disposed on the semi-conductor substrate, provided for a first neural processing unit (NPU) configured to perform operations of an artificial neural network (ANN) model;
a second circuitry, disposed on the semi-conductor substrate, provided for a second NPU configured to perform operations of an ANN model; and
a clock signal supply circuit, disposed on the semi-conductor substrate, configured to output one or more clock signals,
wherein each of the first NPU and the second NPU includes a plurality of processing elements (PEs), and the plurality of PEs include an adder, a multiplier, and an accumulator,
wherein a first clock signal among the one or more clock signals, is supplied to the first NPU, and a second clock signal among the one or more clock signals, is supplied to the second NPU,
wherein at least one of the first and second clock signals has a preset phase based on a phase of an original clock signal, and
wherein the first NPU is configured to operate based on a first phase of the first clock signal, and the second NPU is configured to operate based on a second phase of the second clock signal so that two NPUs including the first NPU and the second NPU operate distributedly in different two phases including the first phase and second phase to reduce a peak power,
wherein a phase difference between the first and second clock signals is determined in consideration of a peak power of the SoC.