Neuromorphic vs Clocked Processing 2D: Spike Raster & Energy Trace

Sensor Event Stream

Event rate 2.0 Hz/node

Spike threshold 3

Clocked Array

Clock sample rate 20 Hz

Energy Meters

1.0×

Clocked / Neuromorphic energy

Neuromorphic total

0 pJ

Clocked total

0 pJ

Active fraction now

Elapsed time

0.0 s

Spike rate — predicted

0.00 Hz

Spike rate — measured

0.00 Hz

How it works

This is a native 2D re-derivation of the same physics as the 3D version — not a flattened camera view of a 3D grid. Instead of a spatial array of spheres, this page draws the two canonical 2D representations neuroscientists and hardware engineers actually use for spike data: a scrolling raster plot (one row per node, a tick each time it fires) and an analog membrane-potential trace for a single node.

Every node independently integrates a Poisson-like sensor-event stream into a membrane potential and spikes — resetting to zero — once it crosses the threshold (leaky-integrate-and-fire with no leak, i.e. a pure integrate-and-fire accumulator):

P(event this frame) = eventRate·dt
if P(i)>=threshold: spike, P(i)=0, E += E_spike
Long-run per-node spike rate = eventRate / threshold
E_neuromorphic(t) = N·(eventRate/threshold)·t·E_spike

The clocked array pays a fixed bill every tick regardless of activity — visible in the raster as vertical bursts where all rows fire together, unlike the neuromorphic raster's scattered, asynchronous dots:

E_clocked(t) = N·f_clock·t·E_sample

The "Spike rate — predicted vs measured" readout is a live numerical check: the predicted rate comes straight from the formula above, the measured rate is the actual running average of spikes-per-node-per-second from this page's own simulation. They converge as elapsed time grows (law of large numbers) — watch them lock together after a few seconds.

Event rate — how often real events arrive at each sensor node (shared by both arrays).
Spike threshold — how much integrated input a neuromorphic node needs before it fires; higher = sparser, cheaper spiking.
Clock sample rate — how often the clocked array polls every node regardless of activity.
Membrane trace — watch node #0's potential climb in steps as events arrive, then snap to zero on every spike (the dashed line marks the threshold).

Neuromorphic — fires on spike only Clocked — samples every tick