arXiv Computer Vision

Adaptive AI: Energy Efficient Multi-exit TinyML on Intelligent Vision Systems at the Edge

The paper presents a novel multi‑exit computational scheme for TinyML on an ultra‑low‑power GAP9 SoC, adding confidence‑based gating points to a MobileNetV2 CNN for ImageNet‑100. By allowing inference to stop early, the approach cuts average MAC operations by 41 % (from 313 MMAC to 185 MMAC), reduces inference time by 29 % (49 ms to 35 ms), and saves 24 % in energy (2.1 mJ to 1.6 mJ per frame) with only a ~1 % drop in accuracy. Compared to a state‑of‑the‑art adaptive CNN on the same hardware, the method more than doubles computational efficiency, raising MAC/cycle from 8.1 to 17.2.

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 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
arXiv AI
Sep 15

MANE: A Multi-Path Adaptive Network for Edge Onloading of Deep Neural Networks

MANE is a distributed inference framework that uses a multi‑path tail architecture to allow dynamic accuracy–throughput trade‑offs during edge onloading of deep neural networks. It introduces a novel multi‑path model, a three‑stage training scheme with Joint Head Network Distillation loss, and a hysteresis‑based scheduler with an equitable device‑fallback policy. The system achieves over 80% SLO satisfaction and 6pp higher accuracy than on‑device alternatives while supporting up to 40 concurrent devices.

By Sokratis Nikolaidis, Stylianos I. Venieris, Leonidas Malachias, Iakovos S. Venieris
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 19

Energy Overhead in Sensor Nodes: Embedded Machine Learning and Data Offloading via Low Power Wide Area Networks

The paper evaluates the energy consumption of sensor nodes in IoT applications, examining the entire pipeline from data acquisition to optional on-device CNN classification and LPWAN transmission using an ESP32‑S3 microcontroller. It compares on‑device inference followed by result transmission with raw data transmission across three environmental monitoring scenarios, varying model architecture and LPWAN technologies (LTE‑M, NB‑IoT, LoRaWAN). Results show that on‑device inference can reduce energy consumption by 1.7× to 6.9× compared to raw data transmission, with a tolerable loss in accuracy, and identify developer‑controllable variables that influence the energy trade‑off.

By Benjamin Karic, Nina Herrmann, Jan Stenkamp, Paula Scharf, Fabian Gieseke, Angela Schwering