Exploring the evolution of NoC-based Spiking Neural Networks on FPGAs

Abstract

Bio-inspired paradigms such as spiking neural networks (SNNs) offer the potential to emulate the repairing and adaptive ability of the brain. This paper presents EMBRACE-FPGA, a scalable, configurable network on chip (NoC)-based SNN architecture, implemented on Xilinx Virtex II-Pro FPGA hardware. In association with a genetic algorithm-based hardware evolution platform, EMBRACE-FPGA provides a computing platform for intrinsic hardware evolution, which can be used to explore the evolution and adaptive capabilities of hardware SNNs. Results demonstrate the application of the hardware SNN evolution platform to solve the XOR benchmark problem.