We introduce total wire length as salient complexity measure for an analysis of the circuit complexity of sensory processing in biological neural systems and neuromorphic engineering. Furthermore we introduce a set of basic computational problems that apparently need to be solved by circuits for translation- and scale-invariant sensory processing. Finally we exhibit a number of circuit design strategies for these new benchmark functions that can be implemented within realistic complexity bounds, in particular with linear or almost linear total wire length.
Robert A. Legenstein, Wolfgang Maass