A highly energy-efficient multi-core neuromorphic architecture for training deep spiking neural networks

There is a growing necessity for edge training to adapt to dynamically changing environments. Neuromorphic computing represents a significant pathway for highly efficient intelligent computation in energy-constrained edges, but existing neuromorphic architectures lack the ability of directly training spiking neural networks based on backpropagation. We developed a multi-core neuromorphic architecture with Feedforward-Propagation, Back-Propagation, and Weight-Gradient engines in each core, supporting highly efficient parallel computing at both the engine and core levels, achieving 190% ~ 330% performance of Jetson Orin. It combines various data flows and sparse computation optimization by fully leveraging the sparsity in spiking neural network training, obtaining a high energy efficiency of 1.05TFLOPS/W@ FP16 @ 28 nm, 55 ~ 85% reduction of memory access compared to A100 GPU in the training. Additionally, we deployed the architecture on Field Programmable Gate Arrays, successfully demonstrating 20-core deep spiking network training and 5-worker federated learning. Our study develops the first multi-core neuromorphic architecture supporting direct training of spiking neural network, facilitating neuromorphic computing in edge-learnable applications.