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arXiv · 2603.24854

Characterization of Off-wafer Pulse Communication in BrainScaleS Neuromorphic System

Bernhard Vogginger·Vasilis Thanasoulis·Johannes Partzsch·Christian Mayr
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Abstract

Neuromorphic VLSI systems take inspiration from biology to enable efficient emulation of large-scale spiking neural networks and to explore new computational paradigms. To establish large neuromorphic systems, a sophisticated routing infrastructure is needed to communicate spikes between chips and to/from the host computer. For the BrainScaleS wafer-scale neuromorphic system considered in this work, especially the stimulation with input spikes and the recording of spikes is demanding, requiring high bandwidth and temporal resolution due to the accelerated emulation of neural dynamics 10.000 faster than biological real time. Here, we present a systematic characterization of the BrainScaleS off-wafer communication infrastructure implemented around Kintex7 FPGAs. The communication flow is characterized in terms of throughput, transmission delay, jitter and pulse loss. Further, we analyze the effect of the communication distortions (like pulse loss and jitter) on a neural benchmark model with highly varying spike activity. The presented methods and techniques for communication evaluation are general applicable and provide useful insights for the mapping of network models to the hardware such as the distribution of input spikes across communication channels.

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Bernhard Vogginger, Vasilis Thanasoulis, Johannes Partzsch, Christian Mayr. 2026-03-25. Characterization of Off-wafer Pulse Communication in BrainScaleS Neuromorphic System. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24854

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