Towards an Expressivity-Normalized Energy-Demand Comparison of ANNs and SNNs

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.29869v1
• Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:56:17 GMT
• Title: Towards an Expressivity-Normalized Energy-Demand Comparison of ANNs and SNNs
• Abstract summary: Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are often regarded as energy-efficient alternatives to artificial neural networks (ANNs)<n>We develop an analytical framework to compare fully-connected ReLU ANNs and integrate-and-fire SNNs for time-series data.
• Score: 15.894969400983642
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are often regarded as energy-efficient alternatives to artificial neural networks (ANNs), yet their advantage depends critically on both network architecture and data properties. We develop an analytical framework to compare fully-connected ReLU ANNs and integrate-and-fire SNNs for time-series data with respect to their theoretical energy efficiency at matched expressive capacity. By relating an inference-energy model to theoretical bounds on representational expressivity, we derive an expressivity-normalized efficiency ratio and explicit thresholds in network width, spike sparsity, and ANN depth scaling. Our analysis characterizes the regimes in which event-driven computation offsets the temporal overhead of SNNs, providing capacity-aware principles for designing energy-efficient temporal networks. It shows that ANNs exceed SNNs in expressivity-normalized efficiency only in specific regimes.

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