@inproceedings{50388bbff2034e3f8d5a752c01df96c6,
title = "Homeostatic fault tolerance in spiking neural networks utilizing dynamic partial reconfiguration of FPGAs",
abstract = "We present a novel methodology that addresses the problem of faults in synapses of a spiking neural network using astrocyte regulation, inspired by recovery processes in the brain. Since Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are widely used for neural network applications, we aim to achieve fault tolerance in an astrocyte-neuron unit implemented on an FPGA. A fault is considered as a reduction in transmission probability of a synapse, leading to reduced spiking activity. Our novel repair mechanism exploits Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (DPR) of the FPGA Clock Management Tiles (CMTs) to increase the clock frequency of neurons with reduced synaptic input, which restores the firing rate to pre-fault levels. The system maintains effective functional behavior with a loss of up to 90% of the original synaptic inputs to a neuron. Our repair mechanism has minimal hardware footprints with the repair unit which consumes only 0.8215% of the complete design and therefore supports scalable implementations. Additionally, the impact on power consumption of the design is also minimal (1.371W). The work opens up a novel way to utilize the capabilities of modern hardware to mimic homeostatic self-repair behavior achieving fault recovery.",
author = "Johnson, {Anju P.} and Junxiu Liu and Millard, {Alan G.} and Shvan Karim and Tyrrell, {Andy M.} and Jim Harkin and Jon Timmis and Liam McDaid and Halliday, {David M.}",
note = "Funding Information: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The work is part of the SPANNER project and is funded by EPSRC grant(EP/N007050/1, EP/N00714X/1). Additionally, the authors would like to acknowledge the platform grant(EP/K040820/1) funded by EPSRC. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 IEEE.; 16th IEEE International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology, ICFPT 2017 ; Conference date: 11-12-2017 Through 13-12-2017",
year = "2017",
month = jul,
day = "2",
doi = "10.1109/FPT.2017.8280139",
language = "English",
series = "2017 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology, ICFPT 2017",
publisher = "IEEE Press",
pages = "195--198",
booktitle = "2017 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology, ICFPT 2017",
address = "United States of America",
}