Low Cost Early Exit Decision Unit Design for CNN Accelerator

Geonho Kim; Jongsun Park

doi:10.1109/ISOCC50952.2020.9333079

Low Cost Early Exit Decision Unit Design for CNN Accelerator

Geonho Kim
, Jongsun Park

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Early exit has been studied as a way to reduce the complex computation of convolutional neural networks. However, in order to determine whether to exit early in a conventional CNN accelerator, there is a problem that a unit for computing softmax layer having a large hardware overhead is required. To solve this problem, we propose a low cost early exit decision unit. The proposed architecture uses only fully-connected (FC) layer outputs to make early exit decisions, so the computation of the softmax layer is not necessary. Our implementation results show an energy reduction of 68% with an accuracy drop of less than 0.3%.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings - International SoC Design Conference, ISOCC 2020
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages	127-128
Number of pages	2
ISBN (Electronic)	9781728183312
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/ISOCC50952.2020.9333079
Publication status	Published - 2020 Oct 21
Event	17th International System-on-Chip Design Conference, ISOCC 2020 - Yeosu, Korea, Republic of Duration: 2020 Oct 21 → 2020 Oct 24

Publication series

Name	Proceedings - International SoC Design Conference, ISOCC 2020

Conference

Conference	17th International System-on-Chip Design Conference, ISOCC 2020
Country/Territory	Korea, Republic of
City	Yeosu
Period	20/10/21 → 20/10/24

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 IEEE.

Keywords

CNN accelerator
early exit
softmax

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Energy Engineering and Power Technology
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Instrumentation
Artificial Intelligence
Hardware and Architecture

Access to Document

10.1109/ISOCC50952.2020.9333079

Cite this

Low Cost Early Exit Decision Unit Design for CNN Accelerator. / Kim, Geonho; Park, Jongsun.
Proceedings - International SoC Design Conference, ISOCC 2020. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2020. p. 127-128 9333079 (Proceedings - International SoC Design Conference, ISOCC 2020).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Kim, G & Park, J 2020, Low Cost Early Exit Decision Unit Design for CNN Accelerator. in Proceedings - International SoC Design Conference, ISOCC 2020., 9333079, Proceedings - International SoC Design Conference, ISOCC 2020, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., pp. 127-128, 17th International System-on-Chip Design Conference, ISOCC 2020, Yeosu, Korea, Republic of, 20/10/21. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISOCC50952.2020.9333079

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abstract = "Early exit has been studied as a way to reduce the complex computation of convolutional neural networks. However, in order to determine whether to exit early in a conventional CNN accelerator, there is a problem that a unit for computing softmax layer having a large hardware overhead is required. To solve this problem, we propose a low cost early exit decision unit. The proposed architecture uses only fully-connected (FC) layer outputs to make early exit decisions, so the computation of the softmax layer is not necessary. Our implementation results show an energy reduction of 68\% with an accuracy drop of less than 0.3\%. ",

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Low Cost Early Exit Decision Unit Design for CNN Accelerator

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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Cite this