High performance computing on SpiNNaker neuromorphic platform: A case study for energy efficient image processing

Abstract

This paper presents an efficient strategy to implement parallel and distributed computing for image processing on a neuromorphic platform. We use SpiNNaker, a many-core neuromorphic platform inspired by neural connectivity in the brain, to achieve fast response and low power consumption. Our proposed method is based on fault-tolerant finegrained parallelism that uses SpiNNaker resources optimally for process pipelining and decoupling. We demonstrate that our method can achieve a performance of up to 49.7 MP/J for Sobel edge detector, and can process 1600 × 1200 pixel images at 697 fps. Using simulated Canny edge detector, our method can achieve a performance of up to 21.4 MP/J. Moreover, the framework can be extended further by using larger SpiNNaker machines. This will be very useful for applications such as energy-aware and time-critical-mission robotics as well as very high resolution computer vision systems.