BrainScaleS-1 — Heidelberg University

The BrainScaleS-1 accelerated neuromorphic system is an wafer-scale integrated circuit architecture for emulating biologically-inspired spiking neural networks.
It was developed by researchers at the Heidelberg University and collaborators.
Key features of the BrainScaleS-1 system include:

System Architecture

• 20 wafers comprising 384 ASICs interconnected by a configurable circuit-switched event routing network on a silicon wafer
• Every ASIC integrate a custom analog core with 512 neuron circuits, 112k plastic synapses, floating-gate-based analog parameter storage, STDP-type long-term and STP-type short-term plasticity and an event routing network

Neural and Synapse Circuits

• Implements the Adaptive Exponential Integrate-and-Fire (AdEx) neuron model with individually configurable model parameters
• On-chip synapse correlation and plasticity measurement enable programmable spike-timing dependent plasticity

Software and Experiment Control

• BrainScaleS OS provides a full software stack including:
  • High-level PyNN-based experiment interfaces
  • C++ core libraries for configuration, calibration and control
  • Mapping and routing tools to translate neural models onto hardware
• Allows both novice and expert usage with varying levels of abstraction
• Supports batch-mode and hybrid-mode experiments (chip-in-the-loop)

Applications and Experiments

• Accelerated (10,000-fold compared to biological real time) emulation of complex spiking neuron dynamics
• Exploration of synaptic plasticity models and critical network dynamics at biological timescales

The accelerated operation and flexible architecture facilitate applications in computational neuroscience research.

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