Adaptive Loss-aware Quantization for Multi-bit Networks

We investigate the compression of deep neural networks by quantizing their weights and activations into multiple binary bases, known as multi-bit networks (MBNs), which accelerates the inference and reduces the storage for deployment on low-resource mobile and embedded platforms. We propose Adaptive Loss-aware Quantization (ALQ), a new MBN quantization pipeline that is able to achieve an average bitwidth below one bit without notable loss in inference accuracy. Unlike previous MBN quantization solutions that train a quantizer by minimizing the error to reconstruct full precision weights, ALQ directly minimizes the quantization-induced error on the loss function involving neither gradient approximation nor full precision calculations. ALQ also exploits strategies including adaptive bitwidth, smooth bitwidth reduction, and iterative trained quantization to allow a smaller network size without loss in accuracy. Experiment results on popular image datasets show that ALQ outperforms state-of-the-art compressed networks in terms of both storage and accuracy.

Disentangling Redundancy for Multi-Task Pruning

Can prior network pruning strategies eliminate redundancy in multiple correlated pre-trained deep neural networks? It seems a positive answer if multiple networks are first combined and then pruned. However, we argue that an arbitrarily combined network may lead to sub-optimal pruning performance because their intra- and inter-redundancy may not be minimised at the same time while retaining the inference accuracy in each task. In this paper, we define and analyse the redundancy in multi-task networks from an information theoretic perspective, and identify challenges for existing pruning methods to function effectively for multi-task pruning. We propose Redundancy-Disentangled Networks (RDNets), which decouples intra- and inter-redundancy such that all redundancy can be suppressed via previous network pruning schemes. A pruned RDNet also ensures minimal computation in any subset of tasks, a desirable feature for selective task execution. Moreover, a heuristic is devised to construct an RDNet from multiple pre-trained networks. Experiments on CelebA show that the same pruning method on an RDNet achieves at least 1:8x lower memory usage and 1:4x lower computation cost than on a multi-task network constructed by the state-of-the-art network merging scheme.

Event-triggered Natural Hazard Monitoring with Convolutional Neural Networks on the Edge

In natural hazard warning systems fast decision making is vital to avoid catastrophes. Decision making at the edge of a wireless sensor network promises fast response times but is limited by the availability of energy, data transfer speed, processing and memory constraints. In this work we present a realization of a wireless sensor network for hazard monitoring which is based on an array of event-triggered seismic sensors with advanced signal processing and characterization capabilities for a novel co-detection technique. On the one hand we leverage an ultra-low power, threshold-triggering circuit paired with on-demand digital signal acquisition capable of extracting relevant information exactly when it matters most and not wasting precious resources when nothing can be observed. On the other hand we use machine-learning-based classification implemented on low-power, off-the-shelf microcontrollers to avoid false positive warnings and to actively identify humans in hazard zones. The sensors' response time and memory requirement is substantially improved by pipelining the inference of a convolutional neural network. In this way, convolutional neural networks that would not run unmodified on a memory constrained device can be executed in real-time and at scale on low-power embedded devices.

Multi-Task Zipping via Layer-wise Neuron Sharing

Future mobile devices are anticipated to perceive, understand and react to the world on their own by running multiple correlated deep neural networks on-device. Yet the complexity of these neural networks needs to be trimmed down both withinmodel and cross-model to fit in mobile storage and memory. Previous studies focus on squeezing the redundancy within a single neural network. In this work, we aim to reduce the redundancy across multiple models. We propose Multi-Task Zipping (MTZ), a framework to automatically merge correlated, pre-trained deep neural networks for cross-model compression. Central in MTZ is a layer-wise neuron sharing and incoming weight updating scheme that induces a minimal change in the error function. MTZ inherits information from each model and demands light retraining to re-boost the accuracy of individual tasks. Evaluations show that MTZ is able to fully merge the hidden layers of two VGG-16 networks with a 3.18% increase in the test error averaged on ImageNet and CelebA, or share 39.61% parameters between the two networks with < 0.5% increase in the test errors for both tasks. The number of iterations to retrain the combined network is at least 17.8x lower than that of training a single VGG-16 network.

Unsupervised Feature Learning for Audio Analysis

Identifying acoustic events from a continuously streaming audio source is of interest for many applications including environmental monitoring for basic research. In this scenario neither different event classes are known nor what distinguishes one class from another. Therefore, an unsupervised feature learning method for exploration of audio data is presented in this paper. It incorporates the two following novel contributions: First, an audio frame predictor based on a Convolutional LSTM autoencoder is demonstrated, which is used for unsupervised feature extraction. Second, a training method for autoencoders is presented, which leads to distinct features by amplifying event similarities. In comparison to standard approaches, the features extracted from the audio frame predictor trained with the novel approach show 13 % better results when used with a classifier and 36 % better results when used for clustering.

Efficient Convolutional Neural Network For Audio Event Detection

Wireless distributed systems as used in sensor networks, Internet-of-Things and cyber-physical systems, impose high requirements on resource efficiency. Advanced preprocessing and classification of data at the network edge can help to decrease the communication demand and to reduce the amount of data to be processed centrally. In the area of distributed acoustic sensing, the combination of algorithms with a high classification rate and resource-constraint embedded systems is essential. Unfortunately, algorithms for acoustic event detection have a high memory and computational demand and are not suited for execution at the network edge. This paper addresses these aspects by applying structural optimizations to a convolutional neural network for audio event detection to reduce the memory requirement by a factor of more than 500 and the computational effort by a factor of 2.1 while performing 9.2% better.

EURETILE D7.3 - Dynamic DAL benchmark coding, measurements on MPI version of DPSNN-STDP (distributed plastic spiking neural net) and improvements to other DAL codes

The EURETILE project required the selection and coding of a set of dedicated benchmarks. The project is about the software and hardware architecture of future many-tile distributed fault-tolerant systems. We focus on dynamic workloads characterised by heavy numerical processing requirements. The ambition is to identify common techniques that could be applied to both the Embedded Systems and HPC domains. This document is the first public deliverable of Work Package 7: Challenging Tiled Applications.

EURETILE 2010-2012 summary: first three years of activity of the European Reference Tiled Experiment

This is the summary of first three years of activity of the EURETILE FP7 project 247846. EURETILE investigates and implements brain-inspired and fault-tolerant foundational innovations to the system architecture of massively parallel tiled computer architectures and the corresponding programming paradigm. The execution targets are a many-tile HW platform, and a many-tile simulator. A set of SW process - HW tile mapping candidates is generated by the holistic SW tool-chain using a combination of analytic and bio-inspired methods. The Hardware dependent Software is then generated, providing OS services with maximum efficiency/minimal overhead. The many-tile simulator collects profiling data, closing the loop of the SW tool chain. Fine-grain parallelism inside processes is exploited by optimized intra-tile compilation techniques, but the project focus is above the level of the elementary tile. The elementary HW tile is a multi-processor, which includes a fault tolerant Distributed Network Processor (for inter-tile communication) and ASIP accelerators. Furthermore, EURETILE investigates and implements the innovations for equipping the elementary HW tile with high-bandwidth, low-latency brain-like inter-tile communication emulating 3 levels of connection hierarchy, namely neural columns, cortical areas and cortex, and develops a dedicated cortical simulation benchmark: DPSNN-STDP (Distributed Polychronous Spiking Neural Net with synaptic Spiking Time Dependent Plasticity). EURETILE leverages on the multi-tile HW paradigm and SW tool-chain developed by the FET-ACA SHAPES Integrated Project (2006-2009).