Learning binary weights to minimize the difference between target and actual outputs can be considered as a parameter optimization task within the given constraints, and thus, it belongs to the… Click to show full abstract
Learning binary weights to minimize the difference between target and actual outputs can be considered as a parameter optimization task within the given constraints, and thus, it belongs to the application domain of the Lagrange multiplier method (LMM). Based on the LMM, we propose a novel event-based weight binarization (eWB) algorithm for spiking neural networks (SNNs) with binary synaptic weights (−1, 1). The algorithm features (i) event-based asymptotic weight binarization using local data only, (ii) full compatibility with event-based end-to-end learning algorithms (e.g., event-driven random backpropagation (eRBP) algorithm), and (iii) the capability to address various constraints (including the binary weight constraint). As a proof of concept, we combine eWB with eRBP (eWB-eRBP) to obtain a single algorithm for learning binary weights to generate correct classifications. Fully connected SNNs were trained using eWB-eRBP and achieved an accuracy of 95.35% on MNIST. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on completely binary SNNs trained using an event-based learning algorithm. Given that eRBP with full-precision (32-bit) weights exhibited 97.20% accuracy, the binarization comes at the cost of an accuracy reduction of approximately 1.85%. The python code is available online: https://github.com/galactico7/eWB.
               
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