A Resource-Efficient Convolutional Neural Network Accelerator Using Fine-Grained Logarithmic Quantization

Abstract

Convolutional Neural Network (ConNN) implementations on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) are being studied since the computational cap-abilities of FPGA have been improved recently. Model compression is required to enable ConNN deployment on resource-constrained FPGA devices. Logarithmic quantization is one of the efficient compression methods that can compress a model to very low bit-width without significant deterioration in performance. It is also hardware-friendly by using bitwise operations for multiplication. However, the logarithmic suffers from low resolution at high inputs due to exponential prop-erties. Therefore, we propose a modified logarithmic quantization method with a fine resolution to compress a neural network model. In experiments, quantized models achieve a negligible loss of accuracy without the need for retraining steps. Besides this, we propose a resource-efficient hardware accelerator for running ConNN inference. Our design completely eliminates multipliers with bit shifters and adders. Throughput is measured in Giga Operation Per Second (GOP/s). The hardware utilization efficiency is represented by GOP/s per block of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and Look-up Tables (LUTs). The result shows that the accelerator achieves resource efficiency of 9.38 GOP/s/DSP and 3.33 GOP/s/kLUTs.