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GaBAN: a generic and flexibly programmable vector neuro-processor on FPGA

Authors:

Youhui ZhangAuthors Info & Claims

DAC '22: Proceedings of the 59th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference

Pages 931 - 936

https://doi.org/10.1145/3489517.3530561

Published: 23 August 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Spiking neural network (SNN) is the main computational model of brain-inspired computing and neuroscience, which also acts as the bridge between them. With the rapid development of neuroscience, accurate and flexible SNN simulation with high performance is becoming important. This paper proposes GaBAN, a generic and flexibly programmable neuro-processor on FPGA. Different from the majority of current designs that realize neural components by custom hardware directly, it is centered on a compact, versatile vector instruction set, which supports multiple-precision vector calculation, indexed-/strided-memory access, and conditional execution to accommodate computational characteristics. By software and hardware co-design, the compiler extracts memory-accesses from SNN programs to generate micro-ops executed by an independent hardware unit; the latter interacts with the computing pipeline through an asynchronous buffering mechanism. Thus memory access delay can fully cover the calculation. Tests show that GaBAN can not only outperform the SOTA ISA-based FPGA solution remarkably but also be comparable with counterparts of the hardware-fixed model on some tasks. Moreover, in end-to-end testing, its simulation performance exceeds that of high-performance X86 processor (1.44--3.0x).

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Cited By

Liu XPu ZQu PZheng WZhang Y(2024)ActiveN: A Scalable and Flexibly-Programmable Event-Driven Neuromorphic Processor2024 57th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO)10.1109/MICRO61859.2024.00085(1122-1137)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/MICRO61859.2024.00085
Kuwahara TOshio RKimura MZhang RNakashima Y(2024)Fusion synapse by memristor and capacitor for spiking neuromorphic systemsNeurocomputing10.1016/j.neucom.2024.127792593(127792)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2024.127792
Rhodes O(2024)Technical Perspective: Research on General-Purpose Brain-Inspired Computing SystemsJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-024-0001-239:1(1-3)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11390-024-0001-2
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

GaBAN: a generic and flexibly programmable vector neuro-processor on FPGA
1. Hardware
  1. Emerging technologies
    1. Analysis and design of emerging devices and systems
      1. Emerging architectures
  2. Integrated circuits
    1. Reconfigurable logic and FPGAs
      1. Hardware accelerators

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cover image ACM Conferences

DAC '22: Proceedings of the 59th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference

July 2022

1462 pages

ISBN:9781450391429

DOI:10.1145/3489517

General Chair:
Rob Oshana
NXP

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 23 August 2022

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Huawei-Tsinghua Computer Architecture Cooperation Project
Tsinghua University-China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd. Joint Institute
Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology
National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)

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DAC '22

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SIGDA

DAC '22: 59th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference

July 10 - 14, 2022

California, San Francisco

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,770 of 5,499 submissions, 32%

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DAC '25

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62nd ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference

June 22 - 26, 2025

San Francisco , CA , USA

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Cited By

Liu XPu ZQu PZheng WZhang Y(2024)ActiveN: A Scalable and Flexibly-Programmable Event-Driven Neuromorphic Processor2024 57th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO)10.1109/MICRO61859.2024.00085(1122-1137)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/MICRO61859.2024.00085
Kuwahara TOshio RKimura MZhang RNakashima Y(2024)Fusion synapse by memristor and capacitor for spiking neuromorphic systemsNeurocomputing10.1016/j.neucom.2024.127792593(127792)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2024.127792
Rhodes O(2024)Technical Perspective: Research on General-Purpose Brain-Inspired Computing SystemsJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-024-0001-239:1(1-3)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11390-024-0001-2
Qu PJi XChen JPang MLi YLiu XZhang Y(2024)Research on General-Purpose Brain-Inspired Computing SystemsJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-023-4002-339:1(4-21)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11390-023-4002-3
Pang MLi YLi ZZhang Y(2023)FABLE: A Development and Computing Framework for Brain-inspired Learning Algorithms2023 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN)10.1109/IJCNN54540.2023.10192026(1-10)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/IJCNN54540.2023.10192026

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