Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

An active dendritic tree can mitigate fan-in limitations in superconducting neurons

Published

Author(s)

Bryce Primavera, Jeff Shainline

Abstract

Superconducting electronic circuits have much to o er with regard to neuromorphic hardware. Superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) can serve as an active element to perform the thresholding operation of a neuron's soma. However, a SQUID has a response function that is periodic in the applied signal. We show theoretically that if one restricts the total input to a SQUID to maintain a monotonically increasing response, a large fraction of synapses must be active to drive a neuron to threshold. We then demonstrate that an active dendritic tree (also based on SQUIDs) can significantly reduce the fraction of synapses that must be active to drive the neuron to threshold. In this context, the inclusion of a dendritic tree provides the dual benefits of enhancing the computational abilities of each neuron and allowing the neuron to spike with sparse input activity.
Citation
Applied Physics Letters

Citation

Primavera, B. and Shainline, J. (2021), An active dendritic tree can mitigate fan-in limitations in superconducting neurons, Applied Physics Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0077142, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932768 (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created December 13, 2021, Updated November 29, 2022