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Virginia Tech

Spike Processing Circuit Design for Neuromorphic Computing

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Von Neumann Bottleneck, which refers to the limited throughput between the CPU and memory, has already become the major factor hindering the technical advances of computing systems. In recent years, neuromorphic systems started to gain increasing attention as compact and energy-efficient computing platforms. Spike based-neuromorphic computing systems require high performance and low power neural encoder and decoder to emulate the spiking behavior of neurons. These two spike-analog signals converting interface determine the whole spiking neuromorphic computing system's performance, especially the highest performance. Many state-of-the-art neuromorphic systems typically operate in the frequency range between 〖10〗^0KHz and 〖10〗^2KHz due to the limitation of encoding/decoding speed. In this dissertation, all these popular encoding and decoding schemes, i.e. rate encoding, latency encoding, ISI encoding, together with related hardware implementations have been discussed and analyzed. The contributions included in this dissertation can be classified into three main parts: neuron improvement, three kinds of ISI encoder design, two types of ISI decoder design. Two-path leakage LIF neuron has been fabricated and modular design methodology is invented. Three kinds of ISI encoding schemes including parallel signal encoding, full signal iteration encoding, and partial signal encoding are discussed. The first two types ISI encoders have been fabricated successfully and the last ISI encoder will be taped out by the end of 2019. Two types of ISI decoders adopted different techniques which are sample-and-hold based mixed-signal design and spike-timing-dependent-plasticity (STDP) based analog design respectively. Both these two ISI encoders have been evaluated through post-layout simulations successfully. The STDP based ISI encoder will be taped out by the end of 2019. A test bench based on correlation inspection has been built to evaluate the information recovery capability of the proposed spiking processing link.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Electrical Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Electrical Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2019

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Zhao, Chenyuan
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Yi, Yang
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Ha, Dong S.
  • Zeng, Haibo
  • Bai, Xianming
  • Abbott, A. Lynn

Subjects

dc:subject × 10

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:22141
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/93591

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Zhao, Chenyuan. Spike Processing Circuit Design for Neuromorphic Computing. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/93591