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A Large-Scale Spiking Neural Network Accelerator for FPGA Systems

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Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2012 (ICANN 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 7552))

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Abstract

Spiking neural networks (SNN) aim to mimic membrane potential dynamics of biological neurons. They have been used widely in neuromorphic applications and neuroscience modeling studies. We design a parallel SNN accelerator for producing large-scale cortical simulation targeting an off-the-shelf Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based system. The accelerator parallelizes synaptic processing with run time proportional to the firing rate of the network. Using only one FPGA, this accelerator is estimated to support simulation of 64K neurons 2.5 times real-time, and achieves a spike delivery rate which is at least 1.4 times faster than a recent GPU accelerator with a benchmark toroidal network.

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Cheung, K., Schultz, S.R., Luk, W. (2012). A Large-Scale Spiking Neural Network Accelerator for FPGA Systems. In: Villa, A.E.P., Duch, W., Érdi, P., Masulli, F., Palm, G. (eds) Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2012. ICANN 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7552. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33269-2_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33269-2_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-33268-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-33269-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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