The paper introduces SpiKFAX, a second‑order optimization technique for Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) that uses a Kronecker‑factored approximation of the Fisher information matrix tailored to the sparse, discrete, and temporally recurrent dynamics of SNNs. By addressing the sharp loss landscape that hampers training with conventional optimizers, SpiKFAX improves test accuracy and training stability across five architectures and seven datasets. The method offers a computationally tractable alternative to existing curvature‑based approaches for SNNs.
By Ngoc Phu Doan, Ihsen Alouani
SpikeMoE introduces a spike-based k‑WTA router that uses lateral inhibition and refractory periods to select the top‑K experts based on discrete spike counts, inspired by hippocampal CA1 competition. The framework combines spiking neural network dynamics with mixture‑of‑experts conditional computation and adds a two‑stage missing‑modality module for robust multimodal processing. Experiments on vision, language, and multimodal tasks show that SpikeMoE matches or surpasses ANN baselines while offering energy‑efficient performance.
By Xiaoli Liu, Yujie Liang, Jialin Li, Malu Zhang
arXiv:2604. 08894v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) offer superior energy efficiency over Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs).
By Zecheng Hao, Shenghao Xie, Kang Chen, Wenxuan Liu, Zhaofei Yu, Tiejun Huang
arXiv:2608. 08479v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Spiking neural networks (SNNs) offer a promising pathway to energy-efficient AI and brain-inspired computing.
By Prasanna Date, Kevin Zhu, Shruti Kulkarni, Ashish Gautam, Chathika Gunaratne, Robert Patton, Tyler Nitzsche, Ian Mulet, Zachary Johnson-Scott, Addison Helms, Duncan Rowden, Simon Weston, Maryam Parsa, Catherine Schuman, Thomas Potok
arXiv:2607. 14672v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Continuous-time spiking neural networks (SNNs) provide an event-driven framework for temporal computation, computational neuroscience, and neuromorphic hardware.
By Yusuke Sakemi, Tomoya Takeuchi, Takeo Hosomi, Kazuyuki Aihara
arXiv:2512. 01906v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are biologically inspired, event-driven models suited for temporal data processing and energy-efficient neuromorphic computing.
By Sanja Karilanova, Subhrakanti Dey, Ay\c{c}a \"Oz\c{c}elikkale
The paper introduces Spiking Contrastive Attention (SCA), a module designed to reduce spectral bias in Spiking Transformers by enhancing high‑frequency information. It demonstrates that spiking neurons and spiking self‑attention act as low‑pass filters, leading to loss of high‑frequency components. Experiments show that SCA improves performance across image classification, semantic segmentation, and event‑based tracking while maintaining lower complexity than the original spiking self‑attention.
By Xiaoli Liu, Malu Zhang, Yang Yang
arXiv:2608. 19238v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Spiking Transformers model token interactions primarily through spiking self-attention (SSA).
By Dongcheng Zhao, Sicheng Shen, Zhenyu Yang, Zhiyuan Li, Jinyan Yu, Yongjian Wang, Tiechui Yao, Wenli Zhang, Tielin Zhang
arXiv:2606. 13016v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are promising for energy-efficient inference, and time-to-first-spike (TTFS) coding is especially attractive because each neuron fires at most once.
By Zhanglu Yan, Jiayi Mao, Kaiwen Tang, Fanfan Li, Gang Pan, Tao Luo, Bowen Zhu, Qianhui Liu, Weng-Fai Wong
Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are well-regarded for their biological plausibility and energy efficiency in processing sequential data. However, dominant SNN architectures typically rely on first-order Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) to govern neuronal state transitions.
The paper presents a spiking neural network (SNN) approach that uses time-to-first-spike (TTFS) coding to limit each neuron to at most one spike per time window, enabling energy-efficient large language models (LLMs). A reference-based strategy is introduced to encode the four core LLM components—embedding layers, layer normalization, attention-related operations, and dropout—allowing the construction of a fully TTFS-based SNN architecture trained end-to-end. Experiments on BERT and GPT-2 show performance comparable to artificial neural network (ANN) counterparts on natural language understanding and common-sense reasoning, while achieving a 1.5‑billion‑parameter spiking LLM and providing an estimate of spike-related energy consumption.
By Zhuoya Zhao, Parsa Omidi, Aref Jafari, Richard Naud
The paper introduces the Sparse-Activation-ReLU (SAR) layer, a single‑step neural operator that promotes activation sparsity without surrogate‑gradient training and is compatible with event‑based computing. In a trunk‑based NOMAD architecture, SAR improves the combined Latency‑Error‑Energy (LEE) metric by over fivefold compared to Variable Spiking Neuron (VSN) and Leaky Integrate‑and‑Fire (LIF) models. Additional techniques such as synthetic knowledge distillation, a ReLU‑based spiking loss, and graph‑neighbor thresholding further reduce LEE and L2 error on the Heat Exchanger dataset, advancing energy‑efficient virtual sensing for edge deployment.
By William Howes, Farid Ahmed, Syed Bahauddin Alam