Extending BrainScaleS OS for BrainScaleS-2 (2003.13750v1)

Abstract: BrainScaleS-2 is a mixed-signal accelerated neuromorphic system targeted for research in the fields of computational neuroscience and beyond-von-Neumann computing. To augment its flexibility, the analog neural network core is accompanied by an embedded SIMD microprocessor. The BrainScaleS Operating System (BrainScaleS OS) is a software stack designed for the user-friendly operation of the BrainScaleS architectures. We present and walk through the software-architectural enhancements that were introduced for the BrainScaleS-2 architecture. Finally, using a second-version BrainScaleS-2 prototype we demonstrate its application in an example experiment based on spike-based expectation maximization.