SpiDR: A Reconfigurable Digital Compute-in-Memory Spiking Neural Network Accelerator for Event-based Perception

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Hauptverfasser: Sharma, Deepika, Negi, Shubham, Dutta, Trishit, Agrawal, Amogh, Roy, Kaushik
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Sharma, Deepika
Negi, Shubham
Dutta, Trishit
Agrawal, Amogh
Roy, Kaushik
author_facet Sharma, Deepika
Negi, Shubham
Dutta, Trishit
Agrawal, Amogh
Roy, Kaushik
contents Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), with their inherent recurrence, offer an efficient method for processing the asynchronous temporal data generated by Dynamic Vision Sensors (DVS), making them well-suited for event-based vision applications. However, existing SNN accelerators suffer from limitations in adaptability to diverse neuron models, bit precisions and network sizes, inefficient membrane potential (Vmem) handling, and limited sparse optimizations. In response to these challenges, we propose a scalable and reconfigurable digital compute-in-memory (CIM) SNN accelerator \chipname with a set of key features: 1) It uses in-memory computations and reconfigurable operating modes to minimize data movement associated with weight and Vmem data structures while efficiently adapting to different workloads. 2) It supports multiple weight/Vmem bit precision values, enabling a trade-off between accuracy and energy efficiency and enhancing adaptability to diverse application demands. 3) A zero-skipping mechanism for sparse inputs significantly reduces energy usage by leveraging the inherent sparsity of spikes without introducing high overheads for low sparsity. 4) Finally, the asynchronous handshaking mechanism maintains the computational efficiency of the pipeline for variable execution times of different computation units. We fabricated \chipname in 65 nm Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) low-power (LP) technology. It demonstrates competitive performance (scaled to the same technology node) to other digital SNN accelerators proposed in the recent literature and supports advanced reconfigurability. It achieves up to 5 TOPS/W energy efficiency at 95% input sparsity with 4-bit weights and 7-bit Vmem precision.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_02854
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SpiDR: A Reconfigurable Digital Compute-in-Memory Spiking Neural Network Accelerator for Event-based Perception
Sharma, Deepika
Negi, Shubham
Dutta, Trishit
Agrawal, Amogh
Roy, Kaushik
Hardware Architecture
Machine Learning
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), with their inherent recurrence, offer an efficient method for processing the asynchronous temporal data generated by Dynamic Vision Sensors (DVS), making them well-suited for event-based vision applications. However, existing SNN accelerators suffer from limitations in adaptability to diverse neuron models, bit precisions and network sizes, inefficient membrane potential (Vmem) handling, and limited sparse optimizations. In response to these challenges, we propose a scalable and reconfigurable digital compute-in-memory (CIM) SNN accelerator \chipname with a set of key features: 1) It uses in-memory computations and reconfigurable operating modes to minimize data movement associated with weight and Vmem data structures while efficiently adapting to different workloads. 2) It supports multiple weight/Vmem bit precision values, enabling a trade-off between accuracy and energy efficiency and enhancing adaptability to diverse application demands. 3) A zero-skipping mechanism for sparse inputs significantly reduces energy usage by leveraging the inherent sparsity of spikes without introducing high overheads for low sparsity. 4) Finally, the asynchronous handshaking mechanism maintains the computational efficiency of the pipeline for variable execution times of different computation units. We fabricated \chipname in 65 nm Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) low-power (LP) technology. It demonstrates competitive performance (scaled to the same technology node) to other digital SNN accelerators proposed in the recent literature and supports advanced reconfigurability. It achieves up to 5 TOPS/W energy efficiency at 95% input sparsity with 4-bit weights and 7-bit Vmem precision.
title SpiDR: A Reconfigurable Digital Compute-in-Memory Spiking Neural Network Accelerator for Event-based Perception
topic Hardware Architecture
Machine Learning
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.02854