Hierarchical Memory SNN: 1000x RAM Reduction through Brain-Inspired Working/Long-term Memory Architecture

I propose a novel hierarchical memory architecture for Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) that achieves approximately 1000x reduction in RAM usage. Inspired by the brain's separation of working memory and long-term memory, this approach stores "hot" neurons in RAM while maintaining "cold" neurons in memory-mapped SSD storage. **Key Results (v1):**- 1,000,000 neurons with only 4MB RAM + 61MB SSD- 1000x RAM reduction vs. conventional approaches - PPL 1.39 on character-level language modeling- Enables deployment on Raspberry Pi, smartphones, and edge devices This opens new possibilities for energy-efficient AI at the edge.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-01-22
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18334309
Primary Topic
Advanced Memory and Neural Computing
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Hierarchical Memory SNN: 1000x RAM Reduction through Brain-Inspired Working/Long-term Memory Architecture

Hiroto Funasaki
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Advanced Memory and Neural Computing
article

Hierarchical Memory SNN: 1000x RAM Reduction through Brain-Inspired Working/Long-term Memory Architecture

Hiroto Funasaki
article en

Abstract

I propose a novel hierarchical memory architecture for Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) that achieves approximately 1000x reduction in RAM usage. Inspired by the brain's separation of working memory and long-term memory, this approach stores "hot" neurons in RAM while maintaining "cold" neurons in memory-mapped SSD storage. **Key Results (v1):**- 1,000,000 neurons with only 4MB RAM + 61MB SSD- 1000x RAM reduction vs. conventional approaches - PPL 1.39 on character-level language modeling- Enables deployment on Raspberry Pi, smartphones, and edge devices This opens new possibilities for energy-efficient AI at the edge.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 80%
Advanced Memory and Neural Computing
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