arXiv AI

Lazy Arithmetic using Systolic Arrays for Closing the Verification Gap on Embedded Systems

arXiv:2607. 15328v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Complex algorithms such as deep neural networks are increasingly being deployed on embedded, resource constrained platforms.

arXiv AI
Sep 17

REQAP: Resilient Weight Packing and Quantization for Edge DNN Acceleration

The paper introduces REQAP, a reliability‑aware quantized weight packing technique for systolic‑array DNN accelerators. It uses a sensitivity‑driven mixed‑precision quantization to assign layer‑wise bit‑widths, a deterministic register‑level packing strategy for SIMD‑within‑a‑register execution, and selective bit‑level protection that replicates critical MSBs into unused register space. Experiments on AlexNet, VGG‑11, and ResNet‑18 show up to 62% memory reduction, 56% fewer MAC operations, and improved accuracy resilience under fault injection compared to baseline and fully protected models.

By Mahdi Taheri, Samira Nazari, Mubassher Ansari, Ali Azarpeyvand, Mohsen Afsharchi, Maksim Jenihhin, Christian Herglotz
arXiv AI
Jul 7

From Arithmetic to Logic: The Resilience of Logic and Lookup-Based Neural Networks Under Parameter Bit-Flips

arXiv:2603. 22770v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The deployment of deep neural networks (DNNs) in safety-critical edge environments necessitates robustness against hardware-induced bit-flip errors.

By Alan T. L. Bacellar, Sathvik Chemudupati, Shashank Nag, Allison Seigler, Priscila M. V. Lima, Felipe M. G. Fran\c{c}a, Lizy K. John
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

RAMP: Robust Adaptive Mixed-Precision Quantization for Edge CPU Vision Models

The paper introduces RAMP, a method for robust adaptive mixed‑precision quantization of vision models on edge CPUs. It evaluates 13 sensitivity metrics across four neural networks, finding that Jensen‑Shannon Divergence consistently identifies layers that can be safely quantized. Using K‑Means clustering on these metrics, RAMP achieves near‑lossless accuracy with an average 1.81× speed‑up, while cautioning against excluding low‑speed‑up layers that can fragment the computational graph.

By David Poblaci\'on-Criado, Dario Garcia-Gasulla, Eduardo Quinones
arXiv AI
2d ago

ShatterQuant: Breaking Uniform Precision with Block-Wise Mixed-Precision on a Systolic Transformer Hardware Accelerator

ShatterQuant is a hardware-software co-designed framework that enables mixed-precision quantization within individual tensors by assigning different bit-widths to blocks of a weight projection. It couples precision granularity with processing element configuration, allowing each precision to determine an effective block height. The framework includes a hardware-aware post-training method based on block-level standard deviation and weight sensitivity, a ShatterQuant Transformer Accelerator supporting 1/2/4/8-bit weight precision, precision-dependent PE configuration, block rescaling, and integrated softmax and piecewise-linear nonlinearities, and an evaluation showing 1.5 TOPS, 760 GOPS/$mm^2$ area efficiency, and 2.8 TOPS/W energy efficiency on a TSMC 16nm PDK implementation.

By Mikolaj Walczak, Edward Humes, Chao Fang, Marian Verhelst, Tinoosh Mohsenin
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 17

FAME: An FPGA-Based Platform for Approximate Multipliers Evaluation with Pattern-Guided DNN Retraining

FAME is an FPGA-based platform that evaluates approximate multipliers directly in hardware, eliminating slow CPU/GPU LUT emulation and reducing evaluation time for DNN inference. It also introduces a pattern-guided retraining method that uses multiplier-specific patterns to recover accuracy losses. Experiments on ResNet‑18 and MobileNetV2 over ImageNet show up to 3.47× faster multiplier evaluation and a 65.5% accuracy improvement over prior retraining approaches.

By Rappy Saha, Nima Amirafshar, Jude Haris, Nima Taherinejad, Jos\'e Cano