Efficient solution validation of constraint satisfaction problems on neuromorphic hardware: the case of Sudoku puzzles

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) offer an effective approach to solving constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) by leveraging their temporal, event-driven dynamics. Moreover, neuromorphic hardware platforms provide the potential for achieving significant energy efficiency in implementing such models. Building upon these foundations, we present an enhanced, fully spiking pipeline for solving CSPs on the SpiNNaker neuromorphic hardware platform. Focusing on the use case of Sudoku puzzles, we demonstrate that the adoption of a constraint stabilization strategy, coupled with a neuron idling mechanism and a built-in validation process, enables this application to be realized through a series of additional layers of neurons capable of performing control logic operations, verifying solutions, and memorizing the network’s state. Simulations conducted in the GPU-enhanced Neuronal Networks (GeNN) environment validate the contributions of each pipeline component before deployment on SpiNNaker. This approach offers three key advantages: i) Improved success rates for solving CSPs, particularly for challenging instances from the hard class, surpassing state-of-the-art SNN-based solvers. ii) Reduced data transmission overhead by transmitting only the final activity state from SpiNNaker instead of all generated spikes. iii) Substantially decreased spike extraction time. Compared to previous work focused on the same use case, our approach achieves a significant reduction in the number of extracted spikes (54.63% to 99.98%) and extraction time (88.56% to 96.41%).