KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Shih-Chii Liu
Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich
Bringing dynamic sparsity to low-power edge computing
Abstract:
Dynamic sparsity is intrinsic to biological computing and is key to its extreme power efficiency. Edge computing systems can improve their energy efficiency and reduce response latency by exploiting this neuromorphic principle. In edge computing, the neuromorphic approach for extracting features replaces conventional ADC and DSP with biological-inspired filters and event generators implemented in mixed-signal circuits. The resulting sparse feature events drive inference in dynamic-sparsity-aware neural network accelerators to reduce computational load and memory access. The demonstration of an ASIC combining the feature extractor and postprocessing network in an edge audio task shows the dynamic savings in power. Exploiting dynamic sparsity at all levels will benefit the design of intelligent devices for edge, wearable and biomedical applications.
Biography:
Shih-Chii Liu received the BS degree in electrical engineering from MIT and the PhD degree in the Computation and Neural Systems program from Caltech. She is Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She co-directs the Sensors group (http://sensors.ini.uzh.ch) at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Her group works on ASIC design of low-power neuromorphic auditory sensors, event-driven bio-inspired processing models and deep neural network algorithms; and the use of these networks in neuromorphic artificial intelligent systems. Dr. Liu is past Chair of the IEEE CAS Sensory Systems and Neural Systems and Applications Technical Committees. She is past associate editor of the IEEE Transactions of Biomedical Circuits and Systems and Neural Networks journal. She was the general co-chair of the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits and Systems (AICAS) and a technical committee member of 2023 IEEE AICAS. She has been current Chair of the IEEE Swiss CAS/ED Society and is a technical committee member of 2025 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC).