Title
NEUTRAMS: Neural network transformation and co-design under neuromorphic hardware constraints.
Abstract
With the recent reincarnations of neuromorphic computing comes the promise of a new computing paradigm, with a focus on the design and fabrication of neuromorphic chips. A key challenge in design, however, is that programming such chips is difficult. This paper proposes a systematic methodology with a set of tools to address this challenge. The proposed toolset is called NEUTRAMS (<u>Neu</u>ral network <u>Tra</u>nsformation, <u>M</u>apping and <u>S</u>imulation), and includes three key components: a neural network (NN) transformation algorithm, a configurable clock-driven simulator of neuromorphic chips and an optimized runtime tool that maps NNs onto the target hardware for better resource utilization. To address the challenges of hardware constraints on implementing NN models (such as the maximum fan-in/fan-out of a single neuron, limited precision, and various neuron models), the transformation algorithm divides an existing NN into a set of simple network units and retrains each unit iteratively, to transform the original one into its counterpart under such constraints. It can support both spiking neural networks (SNNs) and traditional artificial neural networks (ANNs), including convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs). With the combination of these tools, we have explored the hardware/software co-design space of the correlation between network error-rates and hardware constraints and consumptions. Doing so provides insights which can support the design of future neuromorphic architectures. The usefulness of such a toolset has been demonstrated with two different designs: a real Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) neuromorphic chip for both SNNs and ANNs and a processing-in-memory architecture design for ANNs.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.5555/3195638.3195663
MICRO-49: The 49th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture Taipei Taiwan October, 2016
Keywords
Field
DocType
NEUTRAMS toolset,neural network transformation mapping and simulation,neural network co-design,neuromorphic hardware constraints,neuromorphic computing,neuromorphic chip fabrication,neural network transformation algorithm,configurable clock-driven simulator,optimized runtime tool,resource utilization,spiking neural networks,artificial neural networks,convolutional neural networks,multilayer perceptrons,recurrent neural networks,hardware software co-design,network error-rates
Convolutional neural network,Computer science,Parallel computing,Recurrent neural network,Neuromorphic engineering,Chip,Software,Artificial neural network,Spiking neural network,Perceptron
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-4952-9
6
0.44
References 
Authors
36
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yu Ji1162.24
Youhui Zhang220228.36
Shuangchen Li363636.82
Ping Chi41836.34
Cihang Jiang560.44
Peng Qu6132.68
Yuan Xie76430407.00
Wenguang Chen8101470.57