Temporal Separation with Entropy Regularization for Knowledge Distillation in Spiking Neural Networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Yu, Kairong, Yu, Chengting, Zhang, Tianqing, Zhao, Xiaochen, Yang, Shu, Wang, Hongwei, Zhang, Qiang, Xu, Qi
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Yu, Kairong
Yu, Chengting
Zhang, Tianqing
Zhao, Xiaochen
Yang, Shu
Wang, Hongwei
Zhang, Qiang
Xu, Qi
author_facet Yu, Kairong
Yu, Chengting
Zhang, Tianqing
Zhao, Xiaochen
Yang, Shu
Wang, Hongwei
Zhang, Qiang
Xu, Qi
contents Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), inspired by the human brain, offer significant computational efficiency through discrete spike-based information transfer. Despite their potential to reduce inference energy consumption, a performance gap persists between SNNs and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), primarily due to current training methods and inherent model limitations. While recent research has aimed to enhance SNN learning by employing knowledge distillation (KD) from ANN teacher networks, traditional distillation techniques often overlook the distinctive spatiotemporal properties of SNNs, thus failing to fully leverage their advantages. To overcome these challenge, we propose a novel logit distillation method characterized by temporal separation and entropy regularization. This approach improves existing SNN distillation techniques by performing distillation learning on logits across different time steps, rather than merely on aggregated output features. Furthermore, the integration of entropy regularization stabilizes model optimization and further boosts the performance. Extensive experimental results indicate that our method surpasses prior SNN distillation strategies, whether based on logit distillation, feature distillation, or a combination of both. The code will be available on GitHub.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_03144
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Temporal Separation with Entropy Regularization for Knowledge Distillation in Spiking Neural Networks
Yu, Kairong
Yu, Chengting
Zhang, Tianqing
Zhao, Xiaochen
Yang, Shu
Wang, Hongwei
Zhang, Qiang
Xu, Qi
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), inspired by the human brain, offer significant computational efficiency through discrete spike-based information transfer. Despite their potential to reduce inference energy consumption, a performance gap persists between SNNs and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), primarily due to current training methods and inherent model limitations. While recent research has aimed to enhance SNN learning by employing knowledge distillation (KD) from ANN teacher networks, traditional distillation techniques often overlook the distinctive spatiotemporal properties of SNNs, thus failing to fully leverage their advantages. To overcome these challenge, we propose a novel logit distillation method characterized by temporal separation and entropy regularization. This approach improves existing SNN distillation techniques by performing distillation learning on logits across different time steps, rather than merely on aggregated output features. Furthermore, the integration of entropy regularization stabilizes model optimization and further boosts the performance. Extensive experimental results indicate that our method surpasses prior SNN distillation strategies, whether based on logit distillation, feature distillation, or a combination of both. The code will be available on GitHub.
title Temporal Separation with Entropy Regularization for Knowledge Distillation in Spiking Neural Networks
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03144