Title
Resilient Neural Network Training for Accelerators with Computing Errors
Abstract
With the advancements of neural networks, customized accelerators are increasingly adopted in massive AI applications. To gain higher energy efficiency or performance, many hardware design optimizations such as near-threshold logic or overclocking can be utilized. In these cases, computing errors may happen and the computing errors are difficult to be captured by conventional training on general purposed processors (GPPs). Applying the offline trained neural network models to the accelerators with errors directly may lead to considerable prediction accuracy loss. To address this problem, we explore the resilience of neural network models and relax the accelerator design constraints to enable aggressive design options. First of all, we propose to train the neural network models using the accelerators' forward computing results such that the models can learn both the data and the computing errors. In addition, we observe that some of the neural network layers are more sensitive to the computing errors. With this observation, we schedule the most sensitive layer to the attached GPP to reduce the negative influence of the computing errors. According to the experiments, the neural network models obtained from the proposed training outperform the original models significantly when the CNN accelerators are affected by computing errors.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/ASAP.2019.00-23
2019 IEEE 30th International Conference on Application-specific Systems, Architectures and Processors (ASAP)
Keywords
Field
DocType
resilient training,CNN accelerator,relaxed design constrain,fault tolerance
Overclocking,Efficient energy use,Computer science,Real-time computing,Fault tolerance,Artificial neural network,Computer engineering,Applications of artificial intelligence
Conference
Volume
ISSN
ISBN
2160-052X
2160-0511
978-1-7281-1602-0
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.36
3
Authors
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Dawen Xu173.86
KouZi Xing210.36
Cheng Liu38815.87
Ying Wang427655.61
Yulin Dai510.36
Long Cheng69116.99
Huawei Li741756.32
Lei Zhang833427.73