Maybe try simulating the algorithms in software before building hardware? People have been trying to get spiking networks to work for several decades now, with zero success. If it does not work in software, it's not going to work in hardware.
Aren't there limits to what can be simulated in software? Analog systems dealing with infinite precision, and having large numbers of connections between neurons is bound to hit the von Neumann bottleneck for classical computers where memory and compute are separate?