Efficient ANN-SNN Conversion with Error Compensation Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Liu, Chang, Shen, Jiangrong, Ran, Xuming, Xu, Mingkun, Xu, Qi, Xu, Yi, Pan, Gang
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Liu, Chang
Shen, Jiangrong
Ran, Xuming
Xu, Mingkun
Xu, Qi
Xu, Yi
Pan, Gang
author_facet Liu, Chang
Shen, Jiangrong
Ran, Xuming
Xu, Mingkun
Xu, Qi
Xu, Yi
Pan, Gang
contents Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have demonstrated outstanding performance in numerous tasks, but deployment in resource-constrained environments remains a challenge due to their high computational and memory requirements. Spiking neural networks (SNNs) operate through discrete spike events and offer superior energy efficiency, providing a bio-inspired alternative. However, current ANN-to-SNN conversion often results in significant accuracy loss and increased inference time due to conversion errors such as clipping, quantization, and uneven activation. This paper proposes a novel ANN-to-SNN conversion framework based on error compensation learning. We introduce a learnable threshold clipping function, dual-threshold neurons, and an optimized membrane potential initialization strategy to mitigate the conversion error. Together, these techniques address the clipping error through adaptive thresholds, dynamically reduce the quantization error through dual-threshold neurons, and minimize the non-uniformity error by effectively managing the membrane potential. Experimental results on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, ImageNet datasets show that our method achieves high-precision and ultra-low latency among existing conversion methods. Using only two time steps, our method significantly reduces the inference time while maintains competitive accuracy of 94.75% on CIFAR-10 dataset under ResNet-18 structure. This research promotes the practical application of SNNs on low-power hardware, making efficient real-time processing possible.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_01968
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficient ANN-SNN Conversion with Error Compensation Learning
Liu, Chang
Shen, Jiangrong
Ran, Xuming
Xu, Mingkun
Xu, Qi
Xu, Yi
Pan, Gang
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have demonstrated outstanding performance in numerous tasks, but deployment in resource-constrained environments remains a challenge due to their high computational and memory requirements. Spiking neural networks (SNNs) operate through discrete spike events and offer superior energy efficiency, providing a bio-inspired alternative. However, current ANN-to-SNN conversion often results in significant accuracy loss and increased inference time due to conversion errors such as clipping, quantization, and uneven activation. This paper proposes a novel ANN-to-SNN conversion framework based on error compensation learning. We introduce a learnable threshold clipping function, dual-threshold neurons, and an optimized membrane potential initialization strategy to mitigate the conversion error. Together, these techniques address the clipping error through adaptive thresholds, dynamically reduce the quantization error through dual-threshold neurons, and minimize the non-uniformity error by effectively managing the membrane potential. Experimental results on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, ImageNet datasets show that our method achieves high-precision and ultra-low latency among existing conversion methods. Using only two time steps, our method significantly reduces the inference time while maintains competitive accuracy of 94.75% on CIFAR-10 dataset under ResNet-18 structure. This research promotes the practical application of SNNs on low-power hardware, making efficient real-time processing possible.
title Efficient ANN-SNN Conversion with Error Compensation Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01968