title: NeuroFlow: A General Purpose Spiking Neural Network Simulation Platform using Customizable Processors.
abstract: NeuroFlow is a scalable spiking neural network simulation platform for off-the-shelf high performance computing systems using customizable hardware processors such as Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Unlike multi-core processors and application-specific integrated circuits, the processor architecture of NeuroFlow can be redesigned and reconfigured to suit a particular simulation to deliver optimized performance, such as the degree of parallelism to employ. The compilation process supports using PyNN, a simulator-independent neural network description language, to configure the processor. NeuroFlow supports a number of commonly used current or conductance based neuronal models such as integrate-and-fire and Izhikevich models, and the spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) rule for learning. A 6-FPGA system can simulate a network of up to ~600,000 neurons and can achieve a real-time performance of 400,000 neurons. Using one FPGA, NeuroFlow delivers a speedup of up to 33.6 times the speed of an 8-core processor, or 2.83 times the speed of GPU-based platforms. With high flexibility and throughput, NeuroFlow provides a viable environment for large-scale neural network simulation.
authors.affiliation: Custom Computing Research Group, Department of Computing, Imperial College LondonLondon, UK; Centre for Neurotechnology, Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College LondonLondon, UK.
authors.forename: Kit
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cheung
authors.affiliation: Centre for Neurotechnology, Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London London, UK.
authors.forename: Simon R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Schultz
authors.affiliation: Custom Computing Research Group, Department of Computing, Imperial College London London, UK.
authors.forename: Wayne
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Luk
keywords: FPGA; PyNN; STDP; hardware accelerator; large-scale neural simulation; neuromorphic; spiking neural network
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