arXiv:2605.20802cs.ARcs.AI2026-05

提出ELSA架构,让脉冲神经网络实现真正低延迟响应。

ELSA: An ELastic SNN Inference Architecture for Efficient Neuromorphic Computing

论文配图:ELSA: An ELastic SNN Inference Architecture for Efficient Neuromorphic Computing
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 细粒度管道设计,逐脉冲/逐标记即时输出
  • 4位ResNet-50下比顶尖量化模型快3.4倍、能效高13.6倍
  • 适合追求低延迟和高能效的类脑计算场景

脉冲神经网络(SNNs)通过事件驱动和仅加法计算显著提升智能计算效率。其关键时间特性——弹性推理——允许输出逐步生成,使对显著输入的响应远早于完整计算完成。然而,现有SNN专用加速器无法利用此特性:层间设计需等所有层完成后才输出,而时步间设计依赖粗粒度层级流水线,需同步层内所有脉冲/标记。这一瓶颈阻碍结果即时传递,延迟最早响应并丧失弹性推理优势。为此,我们提出ELSA,一种近SRAM数据流架构,通过细粒度脉冲/标记级流水线及针对SNN的硬件优化,实现真正的弹性推理。ELSA在生成后立即转发每个脉冲/标记,形成连续流式处理,大幅降低首次响应延迟。为提升轻量执行效率,ELSA引入捆绑地址事件表示协议以降低片上网络通信开销,并采用小批量脉冲戈斯塔夫森乘积减少内存访问、利用固有稀疏性。结合映射与调度优化,ELSA实现了高效事件驱动计算且不损失精度。实验表明,SNN可超越量化人工神经网络(QANNs)性能,同时保持相当准确率。对于4位ResNet-50,ELSA相比顶级QANN加速器(ANT)达3.4×加速比与13.6×能效提升,相比顶级SNN加速器(PAICORE)达2.9×加速比与22.1×能效增益。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) exploit event-driven and addition-only computation to substantially improve efficiency for intelligent computation. A key temporal property of SNNs, elastic inference, allows outputs to emerge progressively, enabling responses to salient inputs much earlier than full evaluation. However, existing SNN-specific accelerators cannot capitalize on this property. Layer-by-layer designs emit outputs only after all layers are complete, while time-step-by-time-step designs rely on coarse-grained, layer-wise pipelines that require synchronizing all spines/tokens within a layer. This barrier prevents results from being forwarded immediately, delaying the earliest possible response and forfeiting the benefits of elastic inference. To address these challenges, we propose ELSA, a near-SRAM dataflow architecture that realizes true elastic inference through a fine-grained spine/token-wise pipeline and hardware optimizations tailored to SNNs. ELSA forwards each spine/token immediately upon production, forming a continuous streaming pipeline that substantially reduces the latency to the first response. To enhance this lightweight execution, ELSA introduces a bundled address event representation protocol to lower communication traffic of network-on-chip (NoC), and leverages mini-batch spiking Gustavson-product to cut memory access and exploit inherent sparsity. Combined with mapping and scheduling optimizations, ELSA achieves efficient, event-driven computation without compromising accuracy. Experiments show that SNNs can outperform quantized artificial neural networks (QANNs) while maintaining on-par accuracy. For a 4-bit ResNet-50, ELSA achieves 3.4$\times$ speedup and 13.6$\times$ higher energy efficiency over the SOTA QANN accelerator (ANT), and 2.9$\times$ speedup and 22.1$\times$ energy efficiency gains over the SOTA SNN accelerator (PAICORE).

类脑计算脉冲神经网络低延迟

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