# Adaptive Calibration: A Unified Conversion Framework of Spiking Neural Network

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.16219 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16219/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [Surrogate Gradient Learning in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09948/) (2019)
- [BranchyNet: Fast Inference via Early Exiting from Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01686/) (2017)
- [Incorporating Learnable Membrane Time Constant to Enhance Learning of Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05785/) (2020)
- [Spikformer: When Spiking Neural Network Meets Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15425/) (2022)
- [ZeroQ: A Novel Zero Shot Quantization Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00281/) (2020)
- [Temporal Efficient Training of Spiking Neural Network via Gradient Re-weighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11946/) (2022)
- [Spiking-YOLO: Spiking Neural Network for Energy-Efficient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06530/) (2019)
- [Optimal Conversion of Conventional Artificial Neural Networks to Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00476/) (2021)
- [Optimal ANN-SNN Conversion for High-accuracy and Ultra-low-latency Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04347/) (2023)
- [A Free Lunch From ANN: Towards Efficient, Accurate Spiking Neural Networks Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06984/) (2021)
- [Temporal-wise Attention Spiking Neural Networks for Event Streams Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.11711/) (2021)
- [Training High-Performance Low-Latency Spiking Neural Networks by Differentiation on Spike Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.00459/) (2022)
- [Optimal ANN-SNN Conversion for Fast and Accurate Inference in Deep Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.11654/) (2021)
- [Reti-Diff: Illumination Degradation Image Restoration with Retinex-based Latent Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11638/) (2023)
- [Neuromorphic Data Augmentation for Training Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06145/) (2022)
- [SEENN: Towards Temporal Spiking Early-Exit Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01230/) (2023)
- [Reducing ANN-SNN Conversion Error through Residual Membrane Potential](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.02091/) (2023)
- [Bridging the Gap between ANNs and SNNs by Calibrating Offset Spikes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10685/) (2023)
- [Masked Spiking Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01208/) (2022)
- [Fast and Efficient Information Transmission with Burst Spikes in Deep Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.03142/) (2018)
- [Event-driven Vision and Control for UAVs on a Neuromorphic Chip](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.03694/) (2021)
- [Efficient and Accurate Conversion of Spiking Neural Network with Burst Spikes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13271/) (2022)
- [CarSNN: An Efficient Spiking Neural Network for Event-Based Autonomous Cars on the Loihi Neuromorphic Research Processor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00401/) (2021)
- [TCL: an ANN-to-SNN Conversion with Trainable Clipping Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04509/) (2020)
- [Spiking Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17046/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Differential Coding for Training-Free ANN-to-SNN Conversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00301/) (2025)
- [Spiking Neural Networks Need High Frequency Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18608/) (2025)
- [Edge Intelligence with Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14069/) (2025)
- [Error Amplification Limits ANN-to-SNN Conversion in Continuous Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21778/) (2026)
- [Temporal Misalignment in ANN-SNN Conversion and Its Mitigation via Probabilistic Spiking Neurons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14487/) (2025)
- [Learnable Burst Quantization for Expressive and Efficient Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25688/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are seen as an energy-efficient alternative to traditional Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), but the performance gap remains a challenge. While this gap is narrowing through ANN-to-SNN conversion, substantial computational resources are still needed, and the energy efficiency of converted SNNs cannot be ensured. To address this, we present a unified training-free conversion framework that significantly enhances both the performance and efficiency of converted SNNs. Inspired by the biological nervous system, we propose a novel Adaptive-Firing Neuron Model (AdaFire), which dynamically adjusts firing patterns across different layers to substantially reduce the Unevenness Error - the primary source of error of converted SNNs within limited inference timesteps. We further introduce two efficiency-enhancing techniques: the Sensitivity Spike Compression (SSC) technique for reducing spike operations, and the Input-aware Adaptive Timesteps (IAT) technique for decreasing latency. These methods collectively enable our approach to achieve state-of-the-art performance while delivering significant energy savings of up to 70.1%, 60.3%, and 43.1% on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and ImageNet datasets, respectively. Extensive experiments across 2D, 3D, event-driven classification tasks, object detection, and segmentation tasks, demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in various domains. The code is available at: https://github.com/bic-L/burst-ann2snn.