Efficient implementation of STDP rules on SpiNNaker neuromorphic hardware

Recent development of neuromorphic hardware offers great potential to speed up simulations of neural networks. SpiNNaker is a neuromorphic hardware and software system designed to be scalable and flexible enough to implement a variety of different types of simulations of neural systems, including spiking simulations with plasticity and learning. Spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) rules are the most common form of learning used in spiking networks. However, to date very few such rules have been implemented on SpiNNaker, in part because implementations must be designed to fit the specialized nature of the hardware. Here we explain how general STDP rules can be efficiently implemented in the SpiNNaker system. We give two examples of applications of the implemented rule: learning of a temporal sequence, and balancing inhibition and excitation of a neural network. Comparing the results from the SpiNNaker system to a conventional double-precision simulation, we find that the network behavior is comparable, and the final weights differ by less than 3% between the two simulations, while the SpiNNaker simulation runs much faster, since it runs in real time, independent of network size.