Both good points. Yann LeCun (et al) have developed CNN FPGA designs where they project future ASIC performance, but I'm not aware that this has ever been taped

Both good points. Yann LeCun (et al) have developed CNN FPGA designs where they project future ASIC performance, but I'm not aware that this has ever been taped out, nor any power numbers released: http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/publis/pdf/farabet-iscas-10.pdf http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/publis/pdf/farabet-iscas-10.pdf IBM has been working on these chips from 2009 I think, before DNNs really became popular again and I bet they would change a few things if they were designing from scratch today - especially better support for CNNs. The cost of chip production for something like True North is very high (5.4B transistors!) so I suspect they are trying to squeeze as much out of it as they can :)