Sophon
Sophon Logo
Developer	Bitmain
Manufacturer	TSMC
Type	Neural Processors
Introduction	October 25, 2017 (announced) October 25, 2017 (launch)
Process	28 nm 0.028 μm 2.8e-5 mm , 12 nm 0.012 μm 1.2e-5 mm
Technology	CMOS

Sophon is a family of low-power neural processors designed by Bitmain.

Overview

2018 Roadmap

Announced in late 2017 at the AIWORLD 2017 Artificial Intelligence Conference in Beijing, Sophon is a family of low-power neural processors. Bitmain started exploring the field of artificial intelligence and neural processors as early as 2015. By April 2017, their first product, the BM1680, has taped-out. Their chips are designed for both inference and training of neural networks, suitable for working with the common ANNs such as CNN, RNN, and DNN.

Models

High-performance

	List of Sophon Neural Processors
Model	Launched	Process	TDP	Peak Perf (SP)
BM1680	8 November 2017	28 nm 0.028 μm 2.8e-5 mm	41 W 41,000 mW 0.055 hp 0.041 kW	2 TFLOPS 2,000,000,000,000 FLOPS 2,000,000,000 KFLOPS 2,000,000 MFLOPS 2,000 GFLOPS 0.002 PFLOPS
BM1682	March 2018	28 nm 0.028 μm 2.8e-5 mm		3 TFLOPS 3,000,000,000,000 FLOPS 3,000,000,000 KFLOPS 3,000,000 MFLOPS 3,000 GFLOPS 0.003 PFLOPS
BM1684	September 2018	12 nm 0.012 μm 1.2e-5 mm		6 TFLOPS 6,000,000,000,000 FLOPS 6,000,000,000 KFLOPS 6,000,000 MFLOPS 6,000 GFLOPS 0.006 PFLOPS
BM1686	June 2019	12 nm 0.012 μm 1.2e-5 mm		9 TFLOPS 9,000,000,000,000 FLOPS 9,000,000,000 KFLOPS 9,000,000 MFLOPS 9,000 GFLOPS 0.009 PFLOPS
Count: 4

Edge

In late 2018, Bitmain introduced a new series targetting edge computing. Those chips have much lower power consumption.

	List of Sophon Neural Processors
Model	Launched	Process	TDP (Typical)	Peak Perf (INT8)
BM1880	17 October 2018		2.5 W 2,500 mW 0.00335 hp 0.0025 kW	2 TOPS 2,000,000,000,000 OPS 2,000,000,000 KOPS 2,000,000 MOPS 2,000 GOPS 0.002 POPS
Count: 1

See also

• Intel Movidius Myriad
• Cambricon MLU