Flydeling: Streamlined Performance Models for Hardware Acceleration of CNNs through System Identification

The introduction of deep learning algorithms, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in many near-sensor embedded systems, opens new challenges in terms of energy efficiency and hardware performance. An emerging solution to address these challenges is to use tailored heterogeneous hardware accelerators combining processing elements of different architectural natures such as Central Processing Unit (CPU), Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), or Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). To progress towards heterogeneity, a great asset would be an automated design space exploration tool that chooses, for each accelerated partition of a CNN, the most appropriate architecture considering available resources. To feed such a design space exploration process, models are required that provide very fast yet precise evaluations of alternative architectures or alternative forms of CNNs. Quick configuration estimation could be achieved with few parameters from representative input sequences. This article studies a solution called flydeling (as a contraction of flyweight modeling) for obtaining these models by inspiring from the black-box System Identification (SI) domain. We refer to models derived using the proposed approach as flyweight models (flydels).

A methodology is proposed to generate these flydels, using CNN properties as predictor features together with SI techniques with a stochastic excitation input at a feature map dimensions level. For an embedded CPU-FPGA-GPU heterogeneous platform, it is demonstrated that it is possible to learn these Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) flydels at an early design stage and from high-level application features. For latency, energy, and resource utilization, flydels obtain estimation errors varying between 5% and 10% with less model parameters compared to state-of-the-art solutions and are built automatically from platform measurements.