Green Mountain Semiconductor Receives NASA Grant for AI Semiconductor Design

Source: Green Mountain Semiconductor

Green Mountain Semiconductor has been awarded a contract by NASA to develop a semiconductor circuit design for use in AI systems in space environments.

Green Mountain Semiconductor is a Burlington, VT-based semiconductor design business involved in AI-related circuit design since 2014 and has been focusing on the development of ultra-low power in-memory processing circuits for AI. This represents the second contract the company has received from NASA.

Green Mountain Semiconductor specializes in custom analog, digital, and mixed-signal designs with a focus on memory technology such as Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) and emerging Non-Volatile Memory technology (NVM),

Under this new Phase I NASA agreement, Green Mountain will develop “an RRAM-based radiation-tolerant neuromorphic architecture will implement an unsupervised spiking neural network model.”

Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) is a type of non-volatile memory storage. Neuromorphic refers to the design and development of computing systems or devices that are inspired by the structure and functioning of the human brain and nervous system. Spiking neural networks mimic the dynamics of biological neurons.

This architecture leverages RRAM’s unique properties to enhance the efficiency and robustness of AI systems in space environments. RRAM’s radiation tolerance enables the uninterrupted operation of AI systems in space missions, addressing a critical challenge where traditional approaches fall short. The spiking neural network further allows self-training and an asynchronous behavior by reacting only when there is a proper stimulus, both optimizing latency and power consumption.

This proof of concept intends to demonstrate the benefits and efficiency gains of the proposed design, directly applicable for Phase II research and beyond, facilitating the work towards larger designs.

Potential applications include NASA space missions with critical sensor processing where autonomous decision making is paramount. It also applies to systems operating in isolation and having to make decisions when facing unexpected situations.