A Biological-Realtime Neuromorphic System in 28 nm CMOS using Low-Leakage Switched Capacitor Circuits

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 28 nm CMOS neuromorphic system that uses low-leakage switched-capacitor circuits to emulate biological neural dynamics in real-time with low power consumption.

Contribution

It presents a compact, low-power neuromorphic system with biologically realistic dynamics, employing novel leakage compensation techniques for 28 nm CMOS technology.

Findings

Operates in biological real-time at room temperature

Achieves faithful reproduction of neural time constants

Consumes only 1.9 mW power

Abstract

A switched-capacitor (SC) neuromorphic system for closed-loop neural coupling in 28 nm CMOS is presented, occupying 600 um by 600 um. It offers 128 input channels (i.e. presynaptic terminals), 8192 synapses and 64 output channels (i.e. neurons). Biologically realistic neuron and synapse dynam- ics are achieved via a faithful translation of the behavioural equations to SC circuits. As leakage currents significantly affect circuit behaviour at this technology node, dedicated compensation techniques are employed to achieve biological-realtime operation, with faithful reproduction of time constants of several 100 ms at room temperature. Power draw of the overall system is 1.9 mW.