arXiv:2602.09717cs.CVcs.AI2026-02被引 1

轻量级神经网络转脉冲网络,能效提升15.7倍且精度不降。

From Lightweight CNNs to SpikeNets: Benchmarking Accuracy-Energy Tradeoffs with Pruned Spiking SqueezeNet

  • 将轻量CNN转为脉冲网络,用LIF神经元与代理梯度训练。
  • 脉冲版SqueezeNet在CIFAR-10上精度仅低1%,能耗降88.1%。
  • 结构化剪枝使模型参数减19%,准确率提升6%,适合边缘设备。

脉冲神经网络(SNN)因其高能效被视为边缘智能中卷积神经网络(CNN)的潜在替代方案。然而,以往研究多聚焦于大规模模型,轻量级CNN到SNN的转换仍缺乏系统评估。本文首次系统性地对比了由ShuffleNet、SqueezeNet、MnasNet和MixNet转化而来的轻量级SNN,在CIFAR-10、CIFAR-100和TinyImageNet上的性能表现。所有模型均采用漏积分放电(LIF)神经元,并在统一设置下使用代理梯度训练。结果表明,SNN相比对应CNN最高可实现15.7倍的能效提升,且保持竞争力的精度。其中,SqueezeNet的脉冲版本表现最佳。进一步通过结构化剪枝移除冗余模块,得到剪枝版SNN-SqueezeNet-P,其在CIFAR-10上准确率提升6%,参数减少19%,相较原SNN-SqueezeNet,精度仅低1%,但能耗降低88.1%。这些成果确立了轻量级SNN在边缘部署中的可行性,为高效低功耗智能提供了切实路径。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are increasingly studied as energy-efficient alternatives to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), particularly for edge intelligence. However, prior work has largely emphasized large-scale models, leaving the design and evaluation of lightweight CNN-to-SNN pipelines underexplored. In this paper, we present the first systematic benchmark of lightweight SNNs obtained by converting compact CNN architectures into spiking networks, where activations are modeled with Leaky-Integrate-and-Fire (LIF) neurons and trained using surrogate gradient descent under a unified setup. We construct spiking variants of ShuffleNet, SqueezeNet, MnasNet, and MixNet, and evaluate them on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and TinyImageNet, measuring accuracy, F1-score, parameter count, computational complexity, and energy consumption. Our results show that SNNs can achieve up to 15.7x higher energy efficiency than their CNN counterparts while retaining competitive accuracy. Among these, the SNN variant of SqueezeNet consistently outperforms other lightweight SNNs. To further optimize this model, we apply a structured pruning strategy that removes entire redundant modules, yielding a pruned architecture, SNN-SqueezeNet-P. This pruned model improves CIFAR-10 accuracy by 6% and reduces parameters by 19% compared to the original SNN-SqueezeNet. Crucially, it narrows the gap with CNN-SqueezeNet, achieving nearly the same accuracy (only 1% lower) but with an 88.1% reduction in energy consumption due to sparse spike-driven computations. Together, these findings establish lightweight SNNs as practical, low-power alternatives for edge deployment, highlighting a viable path toward deploying high-performance, low-power intelligence on the edge.

脉冲神经网络边缘计算能效优化轻量模型

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