Design of a Reconfigurable 3D Pixel-Parallel Neuromorphic Architecture for Smart Image Sensor

Power reduction and speed-up of image processing algorithms remain of high interest as image resolutions continue to increase. Neuromorphic-circuits are inspired by the nervous system aiming to reduce power consumption and speed-up. This paper presents a neuromorphic smart image sensor designed by the pixel-parallel 3D hierarchical architecture with an on-chip attention module. The module dynamically detects regions with relevant information and produces a feedback path to sample those regions at high speed. On the other hand, by sampling non-relevant regions with a low-speed, the sensor can reduce redundancy and enable high-performance computing by ensuring low-power operation. The image sensor is comprised of several hierarchical planes and each plane has small and independent reconfigurable computational units (XPU). In each plane, all XPUs operate in parallel with a different operating speed which gives a pixel-parallel architecture. When the raw image passes through the hierarchical planes, necessary image processing algorithms are performed in parallel on different planes at a variable clock rate for saving power and reducing redundancy. The goal of this work is to prototype the focal plane image sensor which emulates the brain features. The results show that the prototype achieves remarkable power saving and speed-up at different stages.