NIR roadmap#
NIR is in its early stages but is developing fast. Here, we present an organizational roadmap for the immediate future of NIR governance, followed by a list of concrete projects that are currently developing NIR.
Community involvement
We are dedicated to interacting and paying back to the community and we are continuously improving the accessibility of NIR by (1) releasing educational material, (2) updating our docs, and (3) engaging with the community in open events.
For more information, see our events page and join the discussion on our Discord server.
Organizational roadmap#
With the NIR preprint, we have demonstrated the feasibility of NIR. Not only as a scientific idea, but as a practical and valuable tool for the development of neuromorphic systems. However, NIR has been born in a research environment. To make it self-sustaining, we are preparing to launch a series of projects that will ensure the continued development of NIR, while continuing to increase its value to the community.
The most important pillar of NIR is the joint value for both industrial and academic partners alike. Therefore, the first phase of our roadmap will be to reach out to potential partners and invite them to joint projects for which we can raise funds—either through commercial or public sources. The coming phases will revolve around the fundraising and organization of these projects. Eventually, we will kick off the projects and establish a steering group for NIR as the projects mature and further direction is needed.
_______________ _______________ _______________ _______________
| Phase 1 | -> | Phase 2 | -> | Phase 3 | -> | Phase 4 |
| May 2024 | | July 2024 | | Sep. 2024 | | Dec. 2024 |
| Outreach | | Fundraising | | Kickoff | | Steering grp. |
|_______________| |_______________| |_______________| |_______________|
Active projects#
The follwing projects are concrete intiatives that are working to improve NIR. Feel free to reach out to the project owners if you are interested in contributing or if you have any projects you would like to add.
Extending SpiNNaker 2 support#
Duration: August 2024 Owner: Bernhard Vogginger Description: The current implementation for SpiNNaker2 is static in the sense that we cannot stream input to the chip. We are working to support streaming inputs and, at the same time, speedup SNN processing. More information can be found at the SpiNNaker 2 project milestone 5.
Extending Lava & Loihi support#
Duration: October 2024 Owner: Steven Abreu Description: Currently, Lava and Loihi support the bare minimum primitives for the paper. We are working to expand the support for neuron models and run additional applications.
Energy comparisons on different computational substrates#
Duration: Until July 2024 Owner: Sadasivan Shankar Description: It would be helpful to understand exactly how much energy we can save by lifting a NIR graph to neuromorphic hardware. In this project, we are developing a mapping from NIR graph to energy efficiency, given a computational platform. That is, we can take a NIR graph and calculate a rough estimate of the energy consumption of the graph on a given platform. This will help us to understand the potential energy savings before it is deployed.
Additional neuron models and plasticity#
Timeline: Start October 2024 Owner: Jens Egholm Pedersen Description: We are working on adding additional neuron models and plasticity rules to NIR, including the Fitzhugh-Nagumo model. Plasticity will require additional primitives that can, themselves, modify primitive parameters.