Layered tile architecture for efficient hardware spiking neural networks

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Spiking Neural Network (SNN) is the most recent computational model that can emulate the behaviour of biological neuron system. However, its main drawback is that it is computationally intensive, which limits the system scalability. This paper highlights and discusses the importance and significance of emulating SNNs in hardware devices. A layer-level tile architecture (LTA) is proposed for hardware-based SNNs. The LTA employs a two-level sharing mechanism of computing components at the synapse and neuron levels, and achieves a trade-off between computational complexity and hardware resource costs. The LTA is implemented on a Xilinx FPGA device. Experimental results demonstrate that this approach is capable of scaling to large hardware-based SNNs.