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- All Subjects: hardware accelerator
- Creators: Vrudhula, Sarma
Description
The rapid improvement in computation capability has made deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) a great success in recent years on many computer vision tasks with significantly improved accuracy. During the inference phase, many applications demand low latency processing of one image with strict power consumption requirement, which reduces the efficiency of GPU and other general-purpose platform, bringing opportunities for specific acceleration hardware, e.g. FPGA, by customizing the digital circuit specific for the deep learning algorithm inference. However, deploying CNNs on portable and embedded systems is still challenging due to large data volume, intensive computation, varying algorithm structures, and frequent memory accesses. This dissertation proposes a complete design methodology and framework to accelerate the inference process of various CNN algorithms on FPGA hardware with high performance, efficiency and flexibility.
As convolution contributes most operations in CNNs, the convolution acceleration scheme significantly affects the efficiency and performance of a hardware CNN accelerator. Convolution involves multiply and accumulate (MAC) operations with four levels of loops. Without fully studying the convolution loop optimization before the hardware design phase, the resulting accelerator can hardly exploit the data reuse and manage data movement efficiently. This work overcomes these barriers by quantitatively analyzing and optimizing the design objectives (e.g. memory access) of the CNN accelerator based on multiple design variables. An efficient dataflow and hardware architecture of CNN acceleration are proposed to minimize the data communication while maximizing the resource utilization to achieve high performance.
Although great performance and efficiency can be achieved by customizing the FPGA hardware for each CNN model, significant efforts and expertise are required leading to long development time, which makes it difficult to catch up with the rapid development of CNN algorithms. In this work, we present an RTL-level CNN compiler that automatically generates customized FPGA hardware for the inference tasks of various CNNs, in order to enable high-level fast prototyping of CNNs from software to FPGA and still keep the benefits of low-level hardware optimization. First, a general-purpose library of RTL modules is developed to model different operations at each layer. The integration and dataflow of physical modules are predefined in the top-level system template and reconfigured during compilation for a given CNN algorithm. The runtime control of layer-by-layer sequential computation is managed by the proposed execution schedule so that even highly irregular and complex network topology, e.g. GoogLeNet and ResNet, can be compiled. The proposed methodology is demonstrated with various CNN algorithms, e.g. NiN, VGG, GoogLeNet and ResNet, on two different standalone FPGAs achieving state-of-the art performance.
Based on the optimized acceleration strategy, there are still a lot of design options, e.g. the degree and dimension of computation parallelism, the size of on-chip buffers, and the external memory bandwidth, which impact the utilization of computation resources and data communication efficiency, and finally affect the performance and energy consumption of the accelerator. The large design space of the accelerator makes it impractical to explore the optimal design choice during the real implementation phase. Therefore, a performance model is proposed in this work to quantitatively estimate the accelerator performance and resource utilization. By this means, the performance bottleneck and design bound can be identified and the optimal design option can be explored early in the design phase.
As convolution contributes most operations in CNNs, the convolution acceleration scheme significantly affects the efficiency and performance of a hardware CNN accelerator. Convolution involves multiply and accumulate (MAC) operations with four levels of loops. Without fully studying the convolution loop optimization before the hardware design phase, the resulting accelerator can hardly exploit the data reuse and manage data movement efficiently. This work overcomes these barriers by quantitatively analyzing and optimizing the design objectives (e.g. memory access) of the CNN accelerator based on multiple design variables. An efficient dataflow and hardware architecture of CNN acceleration are proposed to minimize the data communication while maximizing the resource utilization to achieve high performance.
Although great performance and efficiency can be achieved by customizing the FPGA hardware for each CNN model, significant efforts and expertise are required leading to long development time, which makes it difficult to catch up with the rapid development of CNN algorithms. In this work, we present an RTL-level CNN compiler that automatically generates customized FPGA hardware for the inference tasks of various CNNs, in order to enable high-level fast prototyping of CNNs from software to FPGA and still keep the benefits of low-level hardware optimization. First, a general-purpose library of RTL modules is developed to model different operations at each layer. The integration and dataflow of physical modules are predefined in the top-level system template and reconfigured during compilation for a given CNN algorithm. The runtime control of layer-by-layer sequential computation is managed by the proposed execution schedule so that even highly irregular and complex network topology, e.g. GoogLeNet and ResNet, can be compiled. The proposed methodology is demonstrated with various CNN algorithms, e.g. NiN, VGG, GoogLeNet and ResNet, on two different standalone FPGAs achieving state-of-the art performance.
Based on the optimized acceleration strategy, there are still a lot of design options, e.g. the degree and dimension of computation parallelism, the size of on-chip buffers, and the external memory bandwidth, which impact the utilization of computation resources and data communication efficiency, and finally affect the performance and energy consumption of the accelerator. The large design space of the accelerator makes it impractical to explore the optimal design choice during the real implementation phase. Therefore, a performance model is proposed in this work to quantitatively estimate the accelerator performance and resource utilization. By this means, the performance bottleneck and design bound can be identified and the optimal design option can be explored early in the design phase.
ContributorsMa, Yufei (Author) / Vrudhula, Sarma (Thesis advisor) / Seo, Jae-Sun (Thesis advisor) / Cao, Yu (Committee member) / Barnaby, Hugh (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
While machine/deep learning algorithms have been successfully used in many practical applications including object detection and image/video classification, accurate, fast, and low-power hardware implementations of such algorithms are still a challenging task, especially for mobile systems such as Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, and smart drones.
This work presents an energy-efficient programmable application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) accelerator for object detection. The proposed ASIC supports multi-class (face/traffic sign/car license plate/pedestrian), many-object (up to 50) in one image with different sizes (6 down-/11 up-scaling), and high accuracy (87% for face detection datasets). The proposed accelerator is composed of an integral channel detector with 2,000 classifiers for five rigid boosted templates to make a strong object detection. By jointly optimizing the algorithm and efficient hardware architecture, the prototype chip implemented in 65nm demonstrates real-time object detection of 20-50 frames/s with 22.5-181.7mW (0.54-1.75nJ/pixel) at 0.58-1.1V supply.
In this work, to reduce computation without accuracy degradation, an energy-efficient deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) accelerator is proposed based on a novel conditional computing scheme and integrates convolution with subsequent max-pooling operations. This way, the total number of bit-wise convolutions could be reduced by ~2x, without affecting the output feature values. This work also has been developing an optimized dataflow that exploits sparsity, maximizes data re-use and minimizes off-chip memory access, which can improve upon existing hardware works. The total off-chip memory access can be saved by 2.12x. Preliminary results of the proposed DCNN accelerator achieved a peak 7.35 TOPS/W for VGG-16 by post-layout simulation results in 40nm.
A number of recent efforts have attempted to design custom inference engine based on various approaches, including the systolic architecture, near memory processing, and in-meomry computing concept. This work evaluates a comprehensive comparison of these various approaches in a unified framework. This work also presents the proposed energy-efficient in-memory computing accelerator for deep neural networks (DNNs) by integrating many instances of in-memory computing macros with an ensemble of peripheral digital circuits, which supports configurable multibit activations and large-scale DNNs seamlessly while substantially improving the chip-level energy-efficiency. Proposed accelerator is fully designed in 65nm, demonstrating ultralow energy consumption for DNNs.
This work presents an energy-efficient programmable application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) accelerator for object detection. The proposed ASIC supports multi-class (face/traffic sign/car license plate/pedestrian), many-object (up to 50) in one image with different sizes (6 down-/11 up-scaling), and high accuracy (87% for face detection datasets). The proposed accelerator is composed of an integral channel detector with 2,000 classifiers for five rigid boosted templates to make a strong object detection. By jointly optimizing the algorithm and efficient hardware architecture, the prototype chip implemented in 65nm demonstrates real-time object detection of 20-50 frames/s with 22.5-181.7mW (0.54-1.75nJ/pixel) at 0.58-1.1V supply.
In this work, to reduce computation without accuracy degradation, an energy-efficient deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) accelerator is proposed based on a novel conditional computing scheme and integrates convolution with subsequent max-pooling operations. This way, the total number of bit-wise convolutions could be reduced by ~2x, without affecting the output feature values. This work also has been developing an optimized dataflow that exploits sparsity, maximizes data re-use and minimizes off-chip memory access, which can improve upon existing hardware works. The total off-chip memory access can be saved by 2.12x. Preliminary results of the proposed DCNN accelerator achieved a peak 7.35 TOPS/W for VGG-16 by post-layout simulation results in 40nm.
A number of recent efforts have attempted to design custom inference engine based on various approaches, including the systolic architecture, near memory processing, and in-meomry computing concept. This work evaluates a comprehensive comparison of these various approaches in a unified framework. This work also presents the proposed energy-efficient in-memory computing accelerator for deep neural networks (DNNs) by integrating many instances of in-memory computing macros with an ensemble of peripheral digital circuits, which supports configurable multibit activations and large-scale DNNs seamlessly while substantially improving the chip-level energy-efficiency. Proposed accelerator is fully designed in 65nm, demonstrating ultralow energy consumption for DNNs.
ContributorsKim, Minkyu (Author) / Seo, Jae-Sun (Thesis advisor) / Cao, Yu Kevin (Committee member) / Vrudhula, Sarma (Committee member) / Ogras, Umit Y. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
As the Internet of Things continues to expand, not only must our computing power grow
alongside it, our very approach must evolve. While the recent trend has been to centralize our
computing resources in the cloud, it now looks beneficial to push more computing power
towards the “edge” with so called edge computing, reducing the immense strain on cloud
servers and the latency experienced by IoT devices. A new computing paradigm also brings
new opportunities for innovation, and one such innovation could be the use of FPGAs as edge
servers. In this research project, I learn the design flow for developing OpenCL kernels and
custom FPGA BSPs. Using these tools, I investigate the viability of using FPGAs as standalone
edge computing devices. Concluding that—although the technology is a great fit—the current
necessity of dynamically reprogrammable FPGAs to be closely coupled with a host CPU is
holding them back from this purpose. I propose a modification to the architecture of the Intel
Arria 10 GX that would allow it to be decoupled from its host CPU, allowing it to truly serve as a
viable edge computing solution.
alongside it, our very approach must evolve. While the recent trend has been to centralize our
computing resources in the cloud, it now looks beneficial to push more computing power
towards the “edge” with so called edge computing, reducing the immense strain on cloud
servers and the latency experienced by IoT devices. A new computing paradigm also brings
new opportunities for innovation, and one such innovation could be the use of FPGAs as edge
servers. In this research project, I learn the design flow for developing OpenCL kernels and
custom FPGA BSPs. Using these tools, I investigate the viability of using FPGAs as standalone
edge computing devices. Concluding that—although the technology is a great fit—the current
necessity of dynamically reprogrammable FPGAs to be closely coupled with a host CPU is
holding them back from this purpose. I propose a modification to the architecture of the Intel
Arria 10 GX that would allow it to be decoupled from its host CPU, allowing it to truly serve as a
viable edge computing solution.
ContributorsBarth, Brandon Albert (Author) / Ren, Fengbo (Thesis director) / Vrudhula, Sarma (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05