digital silicon
Digital
Valid claim: Implements declared discrete state transitions at the reported precision.
Bounded substrate comparison
Digital and mixed-signal neuromorphic hardware
How can deterministic digital state and variable analog dynamics be compared fairly?
analog dynamics plus digital control
Mixed-signal
Valid claim: Implements measured physical dynamics within reported variability and calibration.
Comparable axes
- Task quality
- Wall-plug energy
- Throughput and stability
Non-equivalences
- Bit precision and analog variability are different error models.
- Calibration is part of mixed-signal operation.
Comparison procedure
- 1.Align task outputs.
- 2.Report error models.
- 3.Include calibration and conversion.
Prohibited inference
Do not compare idealized analog core energy with complete digital system energy or treat physical variability as either free randomness or error without task evidence.
Connected concepts and sources
- NeuroBench: Advancing Neuromorphic Computing Through Collaborative, Fair and Representative Benchmarking · National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Taking Neuromorphic Computing to the Next Level with Loihi 2 · Intel Labs