about
Application-Level Studies of Cellular Neural Network-Based Hardware Accelerators (arxiv.org)
1 point by godelmachine on Mar 18, 2019 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: They built a target tracker for a chip of many connected units that process an image at once, and measured its speed, energy, and accuracy. It matched accuracy of the best standard CPU tracker while cutting energy used times time taken by about 1000x.

Abstract · Application-level Studies of Cellular Neural Network-based Hardware Accelerators

As cost and performance benefits associated with Moore's Law scaling slow, researchers are studying alternative architectures (e.g., based on analog and/or spiking circuits) and/or computational models (e.g., convolutional and recurrent neural networks) to perform application-level tasks faster, more energy efficiently, and/or more accurately. We investigate cellular neural network (CeNN)-based co-processors at the application-level for these metrics. While it is well-known that CeNNs can be well-suited for spatio-temporal information processing, few (if any) studies have quantified the energy/delay/accuracy of a CeNN-friendly algorithm and compared the CeNN-based approach to the best von Neumann algorithm at the application level. We present an evaluation framework for such studies. As a case study, a CeNN-friendly target-tracking algorithm was developed and mapped to an array architecture developed in conjunction with the algorithm. We compare the energy, delay, and accuracy of our architecture/algorithm (assuming all overheads) to the most accurate von Neumann algorithm (Struck). Von Neumann CPU data is measured on an Intel i5 chip. The CeNN approach is capable of matching the accuracy of Struck, and can offer approximately 1000x improvements in energy-delay product.

Qiuwen Lou, Indranil Palit, Tang Li, Andras Horvath, Michael Niemier, X. Sharon Hu
arXiv:1903.06649 · cs.ET, cs.CV, cs.DC · submitted Feb 28, 2019 · updated Jun 12, 2019
abstract · pdf · html

add comment on HN