A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Randomly Connected Networks of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons
Human intelligence relies on the vast number of neurons and their interconnections that form a parallel computing engine. If we tend to design a brain-like machine, we will have no choice but to employ many spiking neurons, each one has a large number of synapses. Such a neuronal network is not only...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2018-10-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Neuroscience |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2018.00698/full |
| _version_ | 1828392024095588352 |
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| author | Kaveh Akbarzadeh-Sherbaf Behrooz Abdoli Saeed Safari Abdol-Hossein Vahabie |
| author_facet | Kaveh Akbarzadeh-Sherbaf Behrooz Abdoli Saeed Safari Abdol-Hossein Vahabie |
| author_sort | Kaveh Akbarzadeh-Sherbaf |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Human intelligence relies on the vast number of neurons and their interconnections that form a parallel computing engine. If we tend to design a brain-like machine, we will have no choice but to employ many spiking neurons, each one has a large number of synapses. Such a neuronal network is not only compute-intensive but also memory-intensive. The performance and the configurability of the modern FPGAs make them suitable hardware solutions to deal with these challenges. This paper presents a scalable architecture to simulate a randomly connected network of Hodgkin-Huxley neurons. To demonstrate that our architecture eliminates the need to use a high-end device, we employ the XC7A200T, a member of the mid-range Xilinx Artix®-7 family, as our target device. A set of techniques are proposed to reduce the memory usage and computational requirements. Here we introduce a multi-core architecture in which each core can update the states of a group of neurons stored in its corresponding memory bank. The proposed system uses a novel method to generate the connectivity vectors on the fly instead of storing them in a huge memory. This technique is based on a cyclic permutation of a single prestored connectivity vector per core. Moreover, to reduce both the resource usage and the computational latency even more, a novel approximate two-level counter is introduced to count the number of the spikes at the synapse for the sparse network. The first level is a low cost saturated counter implemented on FPGA lookup tables that reduces the number of inputs to the second level exact adder tree. It, therefore, results in much lower hardware cost for the counter circuit. These techniques along with pipelining make it possible to have a high-performance, scalable architecture, which could be configured for either a real-time simulation of up to 5120 neurons or a large-scale simulation of up to 65536 neurons in an appropriate execution time on a cost-optimized FPGA. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-10T07:12:52Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-0b25d4e24e4c4e67a4c32182e034aa67 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1662-453X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-10T07:12:52Z |
| publishDate | 2018-10-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj.art-0b25d4e24e4c4e67a4c32182e034aa672022-12-22T01:58:00ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Neuroscience1662-453X2018-10-011210.3389/fnins.2018.00698342315A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Randomly Connected Networks of Hodgkin-Huxley NeuronsKaveh Akbarzadeh-Sherbaf0Behrooz Abdoli1Saeed Safari2Abdol-Hossein Vahabie3High Performance Embedded Architecture Lab., School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, IranHigh Performance Embedded Architecture Lab., School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, IranHigh Performance Embedded Architecture Lab., School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, IranSchool of Cognitive Sciences, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Tehran, IranHuman intelligence relies on the vast number of neurons and their interconnections that form a parallel computing engine. If we tend to design a brain-like machine, we will have no choice but to employ many spiking neurons, each one has a large number of synapses. Such a neuronal network is not only compute-intensive but also memory-intensive. The performance and the configurability of the modern FPGAs make them suitable hardware solutions to deal with these challenges. This paper presents a scalable architecture to simulate a randomly connected network of Hodgkin-Huxley neurons. To demonstrate that our architecture eliminates the need to use a high-end device, we employ the XC7A200T, a member of the mid-range Xilinx Artix®-7 family, as our target device. A set of techniques are proposed to reduce the memory usage and computational requirements. Here we introduce a multi-core architecture in which each core can update the states of a group of neurons stored in its corresponding memory bank. The proposed system uses a novel method to generate the connectivity vectors on the fly instead of storing them in a huge memory. This technique is based on a cyclic permutation of a single prestored connectivity vector per core. Moreover, to reduce both the resource usage and the computational latency even more, a novel approximate two-level counter is introduced to count the number of the spikes at the synapse for the sparse network. The first level is a low cost saturated counter implemented on FPGA lookup tables that reduces the number of inputs to the second level exact adder tree. It, therefore, results in much lower hardware cost for the counter circuit. These techniques along with pipelining make it possible to have a high-performance, scalable architecture, which could be configured for either a real-time simulation of up to 5120 neurons or a large-scale simulation of up to 65536 neurons in an appropriate execution time on a cost-optimized FPGA.https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2018.00698/fullHodgkin-Huxley modelspiking neural networkscalable hardware architectureconnectivity matrixapproximate computingpermutation matrix |
| spellingShingle | Kaveh Akbarzadeh-Sherbaf Behrooz Abdoli Saeed Safari Abdol-Hossein Vahabie A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Randomly Connected Networks of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons Frontiers in Neuroscience Hodgkin-Huxley model spiking neural network scalable hardware architecture connectivity matrix approximate computing permutation matrix |
| title | A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Randomly Connected Networks of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons |
| title_full | A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Randomly Connected Networks of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons |
| title_fullStr | A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Randomly Connected Networks of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Randomly Connected Networks of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons |
| title_short | A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Randomly Connected Networks of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons |
| title_sort | scalable fpga architecture for randomly connected networks of hodgkin huxley neurons |
| topic | Hodgkin-Huxley model spiking neural network scalable hardware architecture connectivity matrix approximate computing permutation matrix |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2018.00698/full |
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