US Patent 12131251 Neurons for artificial neural networks

The present disclosure relates to a neuron for an artificial neural network, the neuron comprising: a first dot product engine and a second dot product engine. The first dot product engine is operative to: receive a first set of weights; receive a set of inputs; and calculate the dot product of the set of inputs and the first set of weights to generate a first dot product engine output. The second dot product engine is operative to: receive a second set of weights; receive the set of inputs; and calculate the dot product of the set of inputs and the second set of weights to generate a second dot product engine output. The neuron further comprises a combiner operative to combine the first dot product engine output and the second dot product engine output to generate a combined output, and an activation function module arranged to apply an activation function to the combined output to generate a neuron output.