Time Dilation and Contraction for Programmable Analog Devices with Jaunt

Abstract

Programmable analog devices are a powerful new computing substrate that are especially appropriate for performing computationally intensive simulations of neuromorphic and cytomorphic models. Current state of the art techniques for configuring analog devices to simulate dynamical systems do not consider the current and voltage operating ranges of analog device components or the sampling limitations of the digital interface of the device. We present Jaunt, a new solver that scales the values that configure the analog device to ensure the resulting analog computation executes within the operating constraints of the device, preserves the recoverable dynamics of the original simulation, and executes slowly enough to observe these dynamics at the sampled digital outputs. Our results show that, on a set of benchmark biological simulations, 1) unscaled configurations produce incorrect simulations because they violate the operating ranges of the device and 2) Jaunt delivers scaled configurations that respect the operating ranges to produce correct simulations with observable dynamics.