ASIE: An Asynchronous SNN Inference Engine for AER Events Processing

• Published in: ACM journal on emerging technologies in computing systems 2020-10, Vol.16 (4), p.1-22
• Main Authors: Kang, Ziyang, Wang, Lei, Guo, Shasha, Gong, Rui, Li, Shiming, Deng, Yu, Xu, Weixia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1550-4832; 1550-4840
• DOI: 10.1145/3404992

Neuromorphic computing based on spiking neural network (SNN) shows good energy-efficiency. However, it is inefficient for SNN to perform the convolution based on frame. It may contain a lot of redundant information in the frame. The output of Dynamic Vision Sensors (DVS) is a stream event based on Address Event Representation (AER). The asynchronous nature of AER events makes the event-based convolution reflect the characteristics of SNN low energy consumption. This article presents an SNN hardware inference engine based on an asynchronous Processing Element (PE) array with AER events as input. The engine uses a convolution algorithm based on AER events. This design also uses distributed storage in the PE array to store the state of neurons to reduce the cost of memory access. The experimental results show that the design can achieve a recognition accuracy of 98.0% for the MNIST AER dataset. The design can perform the reference process more efficiently in the case where the accuracy of the loss is negligible. During the filling and draining processes of the systolic array, the number of active PE units in our PE array is reduced and, thus, the average power consumption per PE unit is drastically decreased.