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An Analytical Estimation of Spiking Neural Networks Energy Efficiency

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Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13623))

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Abstract

Spiking Neural Networks are a type of neural networks where neurons communicate using only spikes. They are often presented as a low-power alternative to classical neural networks, but few works have proven these claims to be true. In this work, we present a metric to estimate the energy consumption of SNNs independently of a specific hardware. We then apply this metric on SNNs processing three different data types (static, dynamic and event-based) representative of real-world applications. As a result, all of our SNNs are 6 to 8 times more efficient than their FNN counterparts.

This research is funded by the ANR project DeepSee, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS and Région Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

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Correspondence to Edgar Lemaire or Benoît Miramond.

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Lemaire, E., Cordone, L., Castagnetti, A., Novac, PE., Courtois, J., Miramond, B. (2023). An Analytical Estimation of Spiking Neural Networks Energy Efficiency. In: Tanveer, M., Agarwal, S., Ozawa, S., Ekbal, A., Jatowt, A. (eds) Neural Information Processing. ICONIP 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13623. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30105-6_48

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