DelGrad: Exact event-based gradients for training delays and weights on spiking neuromorphic hardware

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Göltz, Julian, Weber, Jimmy, Kriener, Laura, Billaudelle, Sebastian, Lake, Peter, Schemmel, Johannes, Payvand, Melika, Petrovici, Mihai A.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866915244303974400
author Göltz, Julian
Weber, Jimmy
Kriener, Laura
Billaudelle, Sebastian
Lake, Peter
Schemmel, Johannes
Payvand, Melika
Petrovici, Mihai A.
author_facet Göltz, Julian
Weber, Jimmy
Kriener, Laura
Billaudelle, Sebastian
Lake, Peter
Schemmel, Johannes
Payvand, Melika
Petrovici, Mihai A.
contents Spiking neural networks (SNNs) inherently rely on the timing of signals for representing and processing information. Incorporating trainable transmission delays, alongside synaptic weights, is crucial for shaping these temporal dynamics. While recent methods have shown the benefits of training delays and weights in terms of accuracy and memory efficiency, they rely on discrete time, approximate gradients, and full access to internal variables like membrane potentials. This limits their precision, efficiency, and suitability for neuromorphic hardware due to increased memory requirements and I/O bandwidth demands. To address these challenges, we propose DelGrad, an analytical, event-based method to compute exact loss gradients for both synaptic weights and delays. The inclusion of delays in the training process emerges naturally within our proposed formalism, enriching the model's search space with a temporal dimension. Moreover, DelGrad, grounded purely in spike timing, eliminates the need to track additional variables such as membrane potentials. To showcase this key advantage, we demonstrate the functionality and benefits of DelGrad on the BrainScaleS-2 neuromorphic platform, by training SNNs in a chip-in-the-loop fashion. For the first time, we experimentally demonstrate the memory efficiency and accuracy benefits of adding delays to SNNs on noisy mixed-signal hardware. Additionally, these experiments also reveal the potential of delays for stabilizing networks against noise. DelGrad opens a new way for training SNNs with delays on neuromorphic hardware, which results in fewer required parameters, higher accuracy and ease of hardware training.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_19165
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DelGrad: Exact event-based gradients for training delays and weights on spiking neuromorphic hardware
Göltz, Julian
Weber, Jimmy
Kriener, Laura
Billaudelle, Sebastian
Lake, Peter
Schemmel, Johannes
Payvand, Melika
Petrovici, Mihai A.
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Emerging Technologies
Machine Learning
Spiking neural networks (SNNs) inherently rely on the timing of signals for representing and processing information. Incorporating trainable transmission delays, alongside synaptic weights, is crucial for shaping these temporal dynamics. While recent methods have shown the benefits of training delays and weights in terms of accuracy and memory efficiency, they rely on discrete time, approximate gradients, and full access to internal variables like membrane potentials. This limits their precision, efficiency, and suitability for neuromorphic hardware due to increased memory requirements and I/O bandwidth demands. To address these challenges, we propose DelGrad, an analytical, event-based method to compute exact loss gradients for both synaptic weights and delays. The inclusion of delays in the training process emerges naturally within our proposed formalism, enriching the model's search space with a temporal dimension. Moreover, DelGrad, grounded purely in spike timing, eliminates the need to track additional variables such as membrane potentials. To showcase this key advantage, we demonstrate the functionality and benefits of DelGrad on the BrainScaleS-2 neuromorphic platform, by training SNNs in a chip-in-the-loop fashion. For the first time, we experimentally demonstrate the memory efficiency and accuracy benefits of adding delays to SNNs on noisy mixed-signal hardware. Additionally, these experiments also reveal the potential of delays for stabilizing networks against noise. DelGrad opens a new way for training SNNs with delays on neuromorphic hardware, which results in fewer required parameters, higher accuracy and ease of hardware training.
title DelGrad: Exact event-based gradients for training delays and weights on spiking neuromorphic hardware
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Emerging Technologies
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.19165