YANA: Bridging the Neuromorphic Simulation-to-Hardware Gap

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Pachideh, Brian, Nitzsche, Sven, Neher, Moritz, Krausse, Jann, Weigelt, Carmen, Knobloch, Klaus, Betancourt, Victor Pazmino, Becker, Juergen
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Pachideh, Brian
Nitzsche, Sven
Neher, Moritz
Krausse, Jann
Weigelt, Carmen
Knobloch, Klaus
Betancourt, Victor Pazmino
Becker, Juergen
author_facet Pachideh, Brian
Nitzsche, Sven
Neher, Moritz
Krausse, Jann
Weigelt, Carmen
Knobloch, Klaus
Betancourt, Victor Pazmino
Becker, Juergen
contents Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) promise significant advantages over conventional Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for applications requiring real-time processing of temporally sparse data streams under strict power constraints -- a concept known as the Neuromorphic Advantage. However, the limited availability of neuromorphic hardware creates a substantial simulation-to-hardware gap that impedes algorithmic innovation, hardware-software co-design, and the development of mature open-source ecosystems. To address this challenge, we introduce Yet Another Neuromorphic Accelerator (YANA), an FPGA-based digital SNN accelerator designed to bridge this gap by providing an accessible hardware and software framework for neuromorphic computing. YANA implements a five-stage, event-driven processing pipeline that fully exploits temporal and spatial sparsity while supporting arbitrary SNN topologies through point-to-point neuron connections. The architecture features an input preprocessing scheme that maintains steady event processing at one event per cycle without buffer overflow risks, and implements hardware-efficient event-driven neuron updates using lookup tables for leak calculations. We demonstrate YANA's sparsity exploitation capabilities through experiments on the Spiking Heidelberg Digits dataset, showing near-linear scaling of inference time with both spatial and temporal sparsity levels. Deployed on the accessible AMD Kria KR260 platform, a single YANA core utilizes 740 LUTs, 918 registers, 7 BRAMS and 24 URAMs, supporting up to $2^{17}$ synapses and $2^{10}$ neurons. We release the YANA framework as an open-source project, providing an end-to-end solution for training, optimizing, and deploying SNNs that integrates with existing neuromorphic computing tools through the Neuromorphic Intermediate Representation (NIR).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_03432
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle YANA: Bridging the Neuromorphic Simulation-to-Hardware Gap
Pachideh, Brian
Nitzsche, Sven
Neher, Moritz
Krausse, Jann
Weigelt, Carmen
Knobloch, Klaus
Betancourt, Victor Pazmino
Becker, Juergen
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Hardware Architecture
Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) promise significant advantages over conventional Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for applications requiring real-time processing of temporally sparse data streams under strict power constraints -- a concept known as the Neuromorphic Advantage. However, the limited availability of neuromorphic hardware creates a substantial simulation-to-hardware gap that impedes algorithmic innovation, hardware-software co-design, and the development of mature open-source ecosystems. To address this challenge, we introduce Yet Another Neuromorphic Accelerator (YANA), an FPGA-based digital SNN accelerator designed to bridge this gap by providing an accessible hardware and software framework for neuromorphic computing. YANA implements a five-stage, event-driven processing pipeline that fully exploits temporal and spatial sparsity while supporting arbitrary SNN topologies through point-to-point neuron connections. The architecture features an input preprocessing scheme that maintains steady event processing at one event per cycle without buffer overflow risks, and implements hardware-efficient event-driven neuron updates using lookup tables for leak calculations. We demonstrate YANA's sparsity exploitation capabilities through experiments on the Spiking Heidelberg Digits dataset, showing near-linear scaling of inference time with both spatial and temporal sparsity levels. Deployed on the accessible AMD Kria KR260 platform, a single YANA core utilizes 740 LUTs, 918 registers, 7 BRAMS and 24 URAMs, supporting up to $2^{17}$ synapses and $2^{10}$ neurons. We release the YANA framework as an open-source project, providing an end-to-end solution for training, optimizing, and deploying SNNs that integrates with existing neuromorphic computing tools through the Neuromorphic Intermediate Representation (NIR).
title YANA: Bridging the Neuromorphic Simulation-to-Hardware Gap
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03432