Address-Event Communication Using Token-Ring Mutual Exclusion
- 1 April 2011
- conference paper
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- No. 15228681,p. 99-108
- https://doi.org/10.1109/async.2011.20
Abstract
We present a novel Address-Event Representation (AER) transmitter circuit to communicate pulses of neural activity (spikes) within a neuromorphic system. AER circuits allow an ensemble of neurons to achieve large scale time-multiplexed connectivity through a shared communication channel. Our design makes use of token-ring mutual exclusion where two circulating tokens in a 2D array of neurons provide exclusive access to the shared channel. Compared to traditional arbitration-tree-based designs, our design has a higher throughput and lower latency during high spiking activity. This allows the circuit to serve larger neuronal densities and higher spiking activity while maintaining the temporal precision required by the system. Our design also eliminates the address line loads that restricted scalability in previous designs. In addition, our simpler circuit topology leads to area and power savings.Keywords
This publication has 13 references indexed in Scilit:
- Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity: From Synapse to PerceptionPhysiological Reviews, 2006
- High-speed, address-encoding arbiter architectureElectronics Letters, 2006
- A Burst-Mode Word-Serial Address-Event Link—I: Transmitter DesignIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, 2004
- A comparative study of access topologies for chip-level address-event communication channelsIEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 2003
- Point-to-point connectivity between neuromorphic chips using address eventsIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, 2000
- Silicon auditory processors as computer peripheralsIEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 1993
- Neuromorphic electronic systemsProceedings of the IEEE, 1990
- Compiling communicating processes into delay-insensitive VLSI circuitsDistributed Computing, 1986
- Distributed mutual exclusion on a ring of processesScience of Computer Programming, 1985
- Communicating sequential processesCommunications of the ACM, 1978