4.4 A 1.3TOPS/W @ 32GOPS Fully Integrated 10-Core SoC for IoT End-Nodes with 1.7μW Cognitive Wake-Up from MRAM-Based State-Retentive Sleep Mode

partially_open12siThis work was supported in part by the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation projects OPRECOMP (Open trans-PREcision COMPuting, g.a. no. 732631) and WiPLASH (Wireless Plasticity for Heterogeneous Massive Computer Architectures, g.a. no. 863337) and by the ECSEL Horizon 2020 project AI4DI (Artificial Intelligence for Digital Industry, g.a. no. 826060).The Internet-of-Things requires end-nodes with ultra-low-power always-on capability for long battery lifetime, as well as high performance, energy efficiency, and extreme flexibility to deal with complex and fast-evolving near-sensor analytics algorithms (NSAAs). We present Vega, an always-on IoT end-node SoC capable of scaling from a 1.7mu W fully retentive COGNITIVE sleep mode up to 32.2GOPS (@49.4mW) peak performance on NSAAs, including mobile DNN inference, exploiting 1.6MB of state- retentive SRAM, and 4MB of non-volatile MRAM. To meet the performance and flexibility requirements of NSAAs, the SoC features 10 RISC-V cores: one core for SoC and IO management and a 9-core cluster supporting multi-precision SIMD integer and floating- point computation. Two programmable machine-learning (ML) accelerators boost energy efficiency in sleep and active state, respectively.embargoed_20210902Rossi D.; Conti F.; Eggiman M.; Mach S.; Mauro A.D.; Guermandi M.; Tagliavini G.; Pullini A.; Loi I.; Chen J.; Flamand E.; Benini L.Rossi D.; Conti F.; Eggiman M.; Mach S.; Mauro A.D.; Guermandi M.; Tagliavini G.; Pullini A.; Loi I.; Chen J.; Flamand E.; Benini L