Method and apparatus for distributed and cooperative computation in artificial neural networks

An apparatus and method are described for distributed and cooperative computation in artificial neural networks. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: an input/output (I/O) interface; a plurality of processing units communicatively coupled to the I/O interface to receive data for input neurons and synaptic weights associated with each of the input neurons, each of the plurality of processing units to process at least a portion of the data for the input neurons and synaptic weights to generate partial results; and an interconnect communicatively coupling the plurality of processing units, each of the processing units to share the partial results with one or more other processing units over the interconnect, the other processing units using the partial results to generate additional partial results or final results. The processing units may share data including input neurons and weights over the shared input bus.