Papers › Optimal Conversion of Conventional Artificial Neural Networks to Spiking Neural Networks

Optimal Conversion of Conventional Artificial Neural Networks to Spiking Neural Networks

28 Feb 2021ICLR 2021 1arXiv:2103.00476archive 2025-07-28

Shikuang Deng, Shi Gu

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are biology-inspired artificial neural networks (ANNs) that comprise of spiking neurons to process asynchronous discrete signals. While more efficient in power consumption and inference speed on the neuromorphic hardware, SNNs are usually difficult to train directly from scratch with spikes due to the discreteness. As an alternative, many efforts have been devoted to converting conventional ANNs into SNNs by copying the weights from ANNs and adjusting the spiking threshold potential of neurons in SNNs. Researchers have designed new SNN architectures and conversion algorithms to diminish the conversion error. However, an effective conversion should address the difference between the SNN and ANN architectures with an efficient approximation \DSK{of} the loss function, which is missing in the field. In this work, we analyze the conversion error by recursive reduction to layer-wise summation and propose a novel strategic pipeline that transfers the weights to the target SNN by combining threshold balance and soft-reset mechanisms. This pipeline enables almost no accuracy loss between the converted SNNs and conventional ANNs with only ∼1/10 of the typical SNN simulation time. Our method is promising to get implanted onto embedded platforms with better support of SNNs with limited energy and memory.

PaperPDFConference PDFCode

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

Code

Jackn0/snn_optimal_conversion_pipeline officialmentioned in paperpytorch report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections