framework-open

Open-source part of the TENNLab Exploratory Neuromorphic Framework

Points of Contact: James S. Plank, Catherine D. Schuman, Charles P. Rizzo.

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What This Repo Contains

This repo contains the following:

• Simulator for the RISP neuroprocessor.
• network_tool: A command-line tool for creating and manipulating spiking neural networks, including those for the RISP neuroprocessor.
• processor_tool_risp: Command-line tool for simulating the RISP neuroprocessor running networks.
• Spiking neural network format definition.
• C++ Network class with supporting methods for creating and manipulating networks.
• C++ Processor interface, for applications (like the processor_tool) that employ spiking neural networks and neuroprocessors. The RISP simulator implements this interface, but the inteface allows for multiple neuroprocessor implementations.

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The RISP Neuroprocessor

This is an extremely simple spiking neuroprocessor. It features leaky integrate-and-fire neurons and synapses with integer delays. Its simplicity facilitates efficient implementations, and there are implementations for RISP in CPU simulation, microcontrollers, and FPGA's. Here are some links about RISP:

• The Case for RISP: A Reduced Instruction Spiking Processor, a paper describing RISP.
• The RISP Markdown In This Repo.
• The VRISP Vectorized Version of RISP
• Open-Source FPGA Implementation of RISP.

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Getting Started

To get started with this repo, please do one or both of:

• Go through the Getting Started markdown file. This has a step-by-step walkthrough of using the various tools in this repo.
• Watch the Getting Started video. This is a video where I go through the Getting Started markdown file. This allows you to go through the steps of learning this software with me explaining as we go.

After that, you should:

• Go through the Network Tool markdown file (which has its own video).
• Go through the RISP markdown file (which also has its own video).

By the end of this exercise, you should be equipped with the know-how and tools to start creating and running your own RISP networks, and to start exploring embedded applications with the Open-Source FPGA Implementation of RISP.

Also, you may want to try vrisp, as its simulator is faster than the original RISP simulator.

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Additional Examples

• Using RISP to calculate the sine function
• The Bars and Stripes problem, and a RISP solution
• DBSCAN
• The Cart-Pole Application
• 8 Cart-Pole Networks from PRWS-2024 (with videos)

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Documentation

In addition to the material above, documentation of everything in this repo is in the markdown directory. You can typically find what you want there, including information on C++ support if you want to leverage this software from C++.

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"I don't want to touch C++"

You don't have to.

Although all of the code in this repo is written in C++, your two main tools, the network_tool and processor_tool, are command-line tools. You may interact with them as command-line programs, and they fit really well with shell scripts and other programming environments. So please go through "Getting Started" below -- you don't have to touch any C++.

Now, there is C++ support for network manipulation and for the RISP neuroprocessor. I suspect the users for this support are rare, but it is there, and we have it documented.

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Support for Python

We would welcome a contribution of python support for this software. With the rest of our software corpus, we use python bindings so that our researchers may do work in either python or C++. Over time, we will provide that here, but we would also very much welcome that contribution from the community.