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N2S3

Last edited by Hammouda Elbez

Description

N2S3 1 is an open-source neuromorphic hardware simulator with the following properties:

  • Event-Based: Event based processing, in contrast to clock-based processing allows the local processing of each event, and high accuracy of timestamp.
  • Scalable: N2S3 uses the Akka project to enable massively concurrent programming. All simulator entities are (potentially) actors. This model fits well with the neural network processing paradigm. Thus a simulation is concurrent and can be distributed on a cluster.
  • Extensible: N2S3 is designed to easily integrate new models and tools.
  • Portable: N2S3 is written in the Scala programming language. It can thus run on any computer compatible with the Java Virtual Machine.
  • Open-Source: This project is under the CECILL-B licence.

Different Network Topologies in N2S3

Each application requires an adapted network topology. E.g.,

  • Feed Forward Neural Networks
  • Convolutional Neural Networks
  • Reservoir Computing (in progress)

Currently working Input Formats

N2S3 is already integrated with the following input formats:

  • Address Event Representation (AER)
  • MNIST

And can be easily extended to read new formats.

Installation

If this is your first N2S3 installation, you may need to set up you Scala environment. All this boils down to installing Java (which you probably have already installed) and then installing sbt. Sbt will manage the installation of the correct scala version for N2S3 and all its dependencies. Additionally, N2S3's code is stored in a git repository. You need to install git in your machine to be able to load the latest version, or to be able to contribute. Otherwise, you'll need to download a released version.

Follow the up-to-date installation instructions of Java and sbt in your own platform.

More details can be found in the repo: https://gitlab.univ-lille.fr/bioinsp/n2s3

Useful Scripts

Official Documentation

Neural Network Scalable Spiking Simulator Documentation:
https://sourcesup.renater.fr/wiki/n2s3/

References

  1. Pierre Boulet, Philippe Devienne, Pierre Falez, Guillermo Polito, Mahyar Shahsavari, et al.. N2S3, an Open-Source Scalable Spiking Neuromorphic Hardware Simulator. [Research Report] Université de Lille 1, Sciences et Technologies; CRIStAL UMR 9189. 2017 ↩

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