Exact Neural Networks from Inexact Multipliers via Fibonacci Weight Encoding
Edge devices must support computationally demanding algorithms, such as neural networks, within tight area/energy budgets. While approximate computing may alleviate these constraints, limiting induced errors remains an open challenge. In this paper, we propose a hardware/software co-design solution via an inexact multiplier, reducing area/power-delay-product requirements by 73/43%, respectively, while still computing exact results when one input is a Fibonacci encoded value. We introduce a retraining strategy to quantize neural network weights to Fibonacci encoded values, ensuring exact computation during inference. We benchmark our strategy on Squeezenet 1.0, DenseNet-121, and ResNet-18, measuring accuracy degradations of only 0.4/1.1/1.7%.
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Simon, W. A., Rey, V., Levisse, A. S. J., Ansaloni, G., Zapater Sancho, M., & Atienza Alonso, D. (2021). Exact Neural Networks from Inexact Multipliers via Fibonacci Weight Encoding. 2021 58th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 805–810. https://doi.org/10.1109/DAC18074.2021.9586245
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