07:05PM EDT - A slightly different talk from Hot Chips this time: here's a neural network processor aimed at IoT devices based in 16nm. The slides look interesting, so we're covering this talk too.

07:05PM EDT - Designing NN algorithms that require less multiplications and less storage

07:05PM EDT - For IoT

07:05PM EDT - MobileNet for reducing workloads

07:06PM EDT - Optimize the hardware to reduce compute

07:06PM EDT - Efficiency vs flexibility

07:06PM EDT - Accelerators optimized for a specific workload might not be flexible

07:07PM EDT - In embedded, still care about die area

07:07PM EDT - DNNs have risk of premature obsolescence

07:07PM EDT - Few DNNs have converged

07:07PM EDT - No silver bullet

07:07PM EDT - IoT spend a lot of time in low power

07:08PM EDT - Heavily optimized hardware is preferential in low power scenarios, but lose flexibility

07:08PM EDT - Don't just care about performance, it's efficiency with minimum perf

07:08PM EDT - This led to SMIV

07:09PM EDT - Built at Harvard, academic chip

07:09PM EDT - 25mm2, 500m transistors, Cortex A-class CPUs

07:09PM EDT - 672-pin BGA package

07:09PM EDT - Near Threshold always on cluster

07:10PM EDT - Rest of system will spend most of the time off

07:10PM EDT - Dual ARM Cortex A53

07:11PM EDT - embedded FPGA core from FlexLogic

07:11PM EDT - Standalone accelerator for CPU

07:11PM EDT - 4MB of SRAM for Neural Network workloads

07:11PM EDT - off-chip link to FPGA

07:12PM EDT - Cortex M0 always on core

07:12PM EDT - Using regularly

07:12PM EDT - Also includes DNN engine classifier

07:12PM EDT - AON cluster has 1 MB of SRAM. Doesn't use off-chip memory access

07:12PM EDT - 150nJ per inference for small tasks

07:13PM EDT - A53 has ACP - Accelerator Coherency Port

07:13PM EDT - efficient way to interface accelerators

07:13PM EDT - Low hardware cost for the accelerator, advantages with coherent memory access

07:14PM EDT - Gives the accelerators access to L2 cache

07:14PM EDT - Fine grained datapath acceleration

07:14PM EDT - Cache Coherent Datapath Acceleators

07:15PM EDT - Embedded FPGA in 2x2 array

07:15PM EDT - Standard cell approach, IP is scalable and flexible

07:15PM EDT - Logic tile is 2500 LUT6, DSP tile has 40x 22b MACs

07:16PM EDT - 2 Logic tiles + 2 DSP tiles in 2x2 array

07:16PM EDT - Use embedded FPGA as standalone accelerator for efficiency vs flexibility

07:16PM EDT - Chips already back from TSMC

07:16PM EDT - All pre-silicon tests passed.

07:17PM EDT - Using for research

07:17PM EDT - eFPGA as first class citizen, incremental wakeup from AON sub-system

07:18PM EDT - AON has best Energy / Area efficiency - but heavily impacted by SRAM

07:18PM EDT - Perf is obviously different

07:18PM EDT - eFPGA is 4.5x efficiency of CPUs

07:18PM EDT - Graph is in GOPS/Watt

07:19PM EDT - eFPGA has area overhead for reconfigurability

07:20PM EDT - Made under DARPA program

07:20PM EDT - No custom layout - standard cells and SRAMs

07:20PM EDT - High-level synthesis using NVIDIA methodology

07:20PM EDT - Scripted methodologies for generating memory mapped registers, IO pad-ring, clock domains

07:21PM EDT - Makes validation on completed silicon easier

07:23PM EDT - Arm Designstart helped

07:23PM EDT - Used academic licences

07:24PM EDT - Driving new IoT use cases with DNN in IoT SoCs in 16nm

07:25PM EDT - Q: What acceleration can you do on eFPGA?

07:26PM EDT - A: MatMul for Convolutional Neural Networks. Smart DMA engines.

07:27PM EDT - Q: Why is the efficiency of the dedicated accelerator less than the Always On?

07:27PM EDT - A: Our dedicated accelerator was mainly focused on the connectivity, but can be scaled

07:28PM EDT - That's a wrap. Next talk in 30 minutes on Xavier

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  • londedoganet - Monday, August 20, 2018 - link

    16nm SMIV DNN SoC for IoT? IMHO, OMG! IWYKIM.
  • londedoganet - Monday, August 20, 2018 - link

    *IYKWIM

    (What does the “D” in “DNN” stand for, by the way?)
  • Ian Cutress - Monday, August 20, 2018 - link

    Deep
  • londedoganet - Monday, August 20, 2018 - link

    TY!
  • sfjbstraining - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link

    Great Information. Thank You Author, for sharing your valuable information about iot with us. People who are reading this blog can continue your knowledge which you gained with us and know how to apply this practically along with our <a

    href="http://www.sfjbstraining.com/product/iot-training/... Training</a>

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