The disclosure relates in general to data processing method and device, and more particularly to data processing method and device used in neural network computing.
Nowadays, neural networks have been widely used in various image and speech recognition fields, and have achieved good results. However, high-accuracy neural networks may not be suitable for real-time application scenarios or end devices. For example, in order to achieve real-time image recognition with processing at least 30 images per second, it may be necessary to optimize the neural networks with considering the limitation of the hardware resource. Therefore, it has become an important task for the industries to reducing the hardware resource needed for the neural network computing.
The disclosure is directed to a data processing method used in neural network computing. The method includes the following steps. During a training phase of a neural network model, a feedforward procedure based on a calibration data is performed to obtain distribution information of a feedforward result for at least one layer of the neural network model. During the training phase of the neural network model, a bit upper bound of a partial sum is generated based on the distribution information of the feedforward result. During an inference phase of the neural network model, a bit-number reducing process is performed on an original operation result of an input data and a weight for the neural network model according to the bit upper bound of the partial sum to obtain an adjusted operation result.
According to one embodiment, a data processing device used for a neural network computing is provided. The data processing device includes a first operation circuit, an adjusting circuit, a second operation circuit, and a storing circuit. The first operation circuit is configured for receiving an input data and a weight for a neural network model and outputting a first operation result. The adjusting circuit is configured for performing bit-number reduced operation on the first operation result according to a bit upper bound of a partial sum to obtain a second operation result during an inference phase of the neural network model. The second operation circuit is configured for receiving the second operation result and a third operation result to generate a fourth operation result. The storing circuit is configured for storing the fourth operation result. The bit upper bound of the partial sum is generated based on distribution information of a feedforward result obtained by performing feedforward procedure based on calibration data for at least one layer of the neural network model during a training phase of the neural network model.
In the following detailed description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the disclosed embodiments. It will be apparent, however, that one or more embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known structures and devices are schematically shown in order to simplify the drawing.
In order to reduce the hardware resource needed for the neural network computing, some neural network optimization technologies include Model Pruning, Model Quantization, Binary Neural Networks, Network Architecture Search, and so on, have been provided. The goal of these technologies may be to reduce the amount of computation or the precision of calculations, so that the hardware can perform multiplication and addition operations with less resources and acceptable accuracy of prediction.
Since the neural network usually require large amount of parameters and FLOPs (floating point operations) for high accuracy, this may demand much hardware computing resources. However, the resources of end devices are limited. When applying deep neural networks (DNN), latency and memory usage may be considered. Therefore, it has become a task for the industries to reduce the amount of computation and parameters to speed up the inference procedure of the neural network model without losing too much accuracy.
Referring to
The input data and the weight are in the form of integer. The original operation result and the adjusted operation result are, for example, in the form of integer, and the original operation result of the input data and the weight is the result of at least one of convolution operation, multiplication operation, matrix multiplication operation, dot product operation, and accumulation operation for the input data and the weight, for example. The term “partial sum” means that the adjusted operation result has partial content of the original operation result after the bit-number reducing process is performed on the original operation result according to the bit upper bound of the partial sum.
When the weight is originally a floating point value, the weight are converted (for example, quantized) to be an integer value. Through the calculation of integers instead of floating point values companying with the bit-number reducing process, inference procedure of the neural network model can be sped up, the amount of memory access and the memory size needed are reduced, and the hardware with the same area can have more processing units.
Referring to
The bit-number reducing process which converting the operation result DW_int of 32-bit binary value to the operation result DW_int with lower than 32-bit binary value will be explained as follows. Refer to
“Saturation procedure” mentioned above means that the binary value will be converted to the largest binary value having the bit upper bound UB as the MSB. For example, assume the operation result R1 of 8-bit integer is represented by (b7 b6 b5 b4 b3 b2 b1 b0)2 and assume the bit upper bound is 6 (corresponding to b5) which points to location of the sixth bit of the 8-bit binary value counting from the LSB (least significant bit) “b0” toward left. Through the bit-number reducing process, when the value of at least one of b7 and b6 is “1” in the operation result R1, which means this binary value (b7 b6 b5 b4 b3 b2 b1 b0)2 is larger than the value which can be represented by the binary value (b5 b4 b3 b2 b1 b0)2 having the bit upper bound UB (corresponding to b5) as the MSB, saturation procedure will be performed to the operation result R1 (b7 b6 b5 b4 b3 b2 b1 b0)2 and the operation result R1 will be converted to the largest binary value (b5 b4 b3 b2 b0)2 having the bit upper bound UB as the MSB, that is (111111)2, for example. On the contrary, when the values of b7 and b6 in the operation result R1 are both “0”, which means the operation result R1 (b7 b6 b5 b4 b3 b2 b0)2 can be represented by the binary value (b5 b4 b3 b2 b0)2 having the bit upper bound UB (corresponding to b5) as the MSB, the bits of b7 and b6 are omitted in the operation result R1 and the binary value (b5 b4 b3 b2 b0)2 is outputted. That is, the operation result R1 will be converted to an adjusted operation result R1′ of the binary value having the bit upper bound UB as the MSB, that is (b5 b4 b3 b2 b0)2, for example.
The data processing method used in neural network computing as shown in
After that, the data processing of the neural network model may further include addition operation. The operation result R2 may be further added with a previous operation result R0 to obtain an operation result R3. Since the previous operation result R0 is the binary value on which the bit-number reducing process has been performed, the previous operation result R0 has the same number of bits with the operation result R2, that is, 4 bits in the example of
Referring to
In step 502, a calibration data 412 is obtained. For example, the calibration data is obtained by picking some data from the training data 414. In step 504, during the training phase of the neural network model, a feedforward procedure based on a calibration data 412 is performed to obtain distribution information of a feedforward result for each layer of the neural network model 406 by the evaluation unit 404. The distribution information of the feedforward result for each layer of the neural network model 406 is recorded. The distribution information of the feedforward result at least includes a mean and a standard deviation. The neural network model 406 is a pre-trained neural network model, for example.
In step 506, the bit upper bound UB of the partial sum is determined according to the mean and the standard deviation by the determination unit of the bit upper bound 410. Furthermore, the bit upper bound of the partial sum is related to a binary logarithm of a value which is the mean plus N times of the standard deviation, N is an integer. For example, the bit upper bound of the partial sum UB is calculated based on the following equation 1 and equation 2:
“V” is a real number, “p” represents “mean” of the result, and “STD” represents “standard deviation”. “N” is an integer. “UB” represents the bit upper bound and “LB” represents the bit lower bound. The function “max(a, b)” is to select the maximum from the values a and b in the parentheses, the function “abs(x)” is to output the absolute value of x, and the function “ceil(y)” maps y to the least integer greater than or equal to y. The above variations a, b, x, and y are provided for the explanation of functions.
In step 508, the bit upper bound UB of the partial sum is incorporated to each layer of neural network model 406 and the neural network model 406 is trained again (for example, fine-tuned) by using the bit upper bound UB of the partial sum to perform saturation procedure to a training operation result of a training data 414 through the training unit 402. The training operation result of the training data 414 is the result when the training data 414 is applied to train the neural network model 406. After the neural network model 406 is trained again by using the bit upper bound UB, the accuracy of the neural network model 406 will be improved.
In step 510, a bit lower bound LB of the partial sum is generated by deducting a bit width of an accumulator from the bit upper bound UB of the partial sum through the determination unit of the bit lower bound 408. For example, the bit lower bound LB of the partial sum can be calculated based on the following equation 3, where BWacc represents the bit width of accumulator in hardware:
Table 1 below provides an example of the values of mean μ and standard deviation STD in the distribution information of a feedforward result and corresponding bit upper bound UB and bit lower bound LB for different layers L1, L2, and L3 of the neural network model. Assume the original operation result Rx is (bj-1 bj-2 . . . b2 b1 b0)2, UB is the value between 1 and j, and LB is the value between 1 and UB. Len N equal to 2. L1, L2, and L3 represent three different layers of the neural network model. The bit width of accumulator BWacc isassumed to be 8 bits in hardware.
Refer to
In step 512, an accuracy of the neural network model 406 is measured by using the evaluation unit 404 with a testing data 416. Furthermore, the neural network model 406 can be trained again (for example, fine-tuned) by using the bit upper bound UB and the bit lower bound LB of the partial sum to perform saturation procedure to the training operation result of the training data 414. Or, the neural network model 406 can be trained again by using the bit upper bound UB and the bit lower bound LB of the partial sum to perform saturation procedure to the training operation result of the training data 414 when the accuracy of the neural network model 406 is lower than a threshold.
When the bit lower bound LB of the partial sum is not used, the value of the bit upper bound UB is preferably equal or smaller than a bit width of an accumulator in hardware. When the bit lower bound LB of the partial sum is used, the value of the bit upper bound UB may be preferably larger than the bit width of the accumulator in hardware.
The disclosure further provides a data processing device used in neural network computing. Refer to
The first operation circuit 702, for example, includes a multiplier. The first operation result Out1 is the multiplication of the input data D and the weight W. The adjusting circuit 704, for example, includes a first saturation circuit 710 for performing saturation procedure on the first operation result Out1 according to the bit upper bound UB of the partial sum to generate the saturated operation result Out1′. The adjusting circuit 704 may further include a shifting circuit 712 for performing shifting operation on the saturated operation result Out1′ from the first saturation circuit 710. The shifting operation is performed according to a bit lower bound LB of the partial sum. The bit upper bound UB and the bit lower bound LB can be generated according to the ways mentioned above.
Preferably, the input data D and the weight W are in the form of integer. The first operation result Out1, the second operation result Out2, the third operation result Out3, and the fourth operation result Out4 are in the form of integer.
The second operation circuit 706 can include an adder 714 which adding the second operation result Out2 and the third operation result Out3. The second operation circuit 706 can further includes a second saturation circuit 716 which performs saturation procedure on an output Out2′ of the adder 714 according to the difference value of the bit upper bound UB of the partial sum and the bit lower bound LB of the partial sum (that is, UB-LB). Therefore, when the value of the output Out2′ of the adder 714 is larger than the value which can be represented by the number of bits of UB-LB, the value of the output Out2′ will be converted to the largest value which can be represent by the value having the number of bits of UB-LB.
The data processing device 700 can further includes an input pad 718 and an output pad 720. The input pad 718 is configured to receive a partial sum PSUM IN from other source (for example, other processing unit), and the output pad 720 is configured to output a partial sum PSUM OUT. The partial sum PSUM OUT may be outputted to other processing unit, for example, for further processing. Optionally, the data processing device 700 further includes a first memory 722 for storing the input data D and a second memory 724 for storing the weight W. The data processing device 700 can optionally include a multiplexer 722 for choosing one of the output from the shifting circuit 712 and the partial sum PSUM IN to be the second operation result Out2.
Refer to
Referring to
Referring to Table 2 below, the experimental results for image classification by using Resnet 50 model and for object detection by using Yolo V2 model are listed. The number of bits of weight, the number of bits of input data, the number of bits of partial sum, and the accuracy/mAP (mean average precision) are listed. It can be observed that the accuracy/mAP of image classification is reduced from 74.9% to 73.8% (the difference is 74.9%-73.8% =1.1%) when the bit upper bound UB is used, and the accuracy/mAP of image classification is reduced from 74.9% to 73.7% (the difference is 74.9%-73.7% =1.2%) when both the bit upper bound UB and the bit lower bound LB are used. Besides, it can also be observed that the accuracy/mAP of object detection is reduced from 72.9% to 72.5% (the difference is 72.9%-72.5% =0.4%) when the bit upper bound UB is used, and the accuracy/mAP of object detection is reduced from 72.9% to 72.4% (the difference is 72.9%-72.4% =0.5%) when both the bit upper bound UB and the bit lower bound LB are used. It is noted that the accuracy is almost the same even the number of bits for partial sum is reduced by using the bit upper bound UB and the bit lower bound LB.
Regarding to the aspect of area of hardware, the area for single process unit (PE) in Eyeriss v2 (a flexible accelerator for emerging deep neural networks on mobile devices) will be reduced by 11.2% when number of bits of the partial sum is reduced from 20 bit to 8 bit. Therefore, the data processing method and device used in neural network computing according to the embodiment of the disclosure can reduce the amount of computation to speed up the inference procedure.
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made to the disclosed embodiments. It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with a true scope of the disclosure being indicated by the following claims and their equivalents.
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