Machine Learning Based Auto-tuning for Enhanced OpenCL Performance Portability

Heterogeneous computing, which combines devices with different architectures, is rising in popularity, and promises increased performance combined with reduced energy consumption. OpenCL has been proposed as a standard for programing such systems, and offers functional portability. It does, however, suffer from poor performance portability, code tuned for one device must be re-tuned to achieve good performance on another device. In this paper, we use machine learning-based auto-tuning to address this problem. Benchmarks are run on a random subset of the entire tuning parameter configuration space, and the results are used to build an artificial neural network based model. The model can then be used to find interesting parts of the parameter space for further search. We evaluate our method with different benchmarks, on several devices, including an Intel i7 3770 CPU, an Nvidia K40 GPU and an AMD Radeon HD 7970 GPU. Our model achieves a mean relative error as low as 6.1%, and is able to find configurations as little as 1.3% worse than the global minimum.Comment: This is a pre-print version an article to be published in the Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops (IPDPSW). For personal use onl

Event-based Vision: A Survey

Event cameras are bio-inspired sensors that differ from conventional frame cameras: Instead of capturing images at a fixed rate, they asynchronously measure per-pixel brightness changes, and output a stream of events that encode the time, location and sign of the brightness changes. Event cameras offer attractive properties compared to traditional cameras: high temporal resolution (in the order of microseconds), very high dynamic range (140 dB vs. 60 dB), low power consumption, and high pixel bandwidth (on the order of kHz) resulting in reduced motion blur. Hence, event cameras have a large potential for robotics and computer vision in challenging scenarios for traditional cameras, such as low-latency, high speed, and high dynamic range. However, novel methods are required to process the unconventional output of these sensors in order to unlock their potential. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of event-based vision, with a focus on the applications and the algorithms developed to unlock the outstanding properties of event cameras. We present event cameras from their working principle, the actual sensors that are available and the tasks that they have been used for, from low-level vision (feature detection and tracking, optic flow, etc.) to high-level vision (reconstruction, segmentation, recognition). We also discuss the techniques developed to process events, including learning-based techniques, as well as specialized processors for these novel sensors, such as spiking neural networks. Additionally, we highlight the challenges that remain to be tackled and the opportunities that lie ahead in the search for a more efficient, bio-inspired way for machines to perceive and interact with the world

High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANs

We present a new method for synthesizing high-resolution photo-realistic images from semantic label maps using conditional generative adversarial networks (conditional GANs). Conditional GANs have enabled a variety of applications, but the results are often limited to low-resolution and still far from realistic. In this work, we generate 2048x1024 visually appealing results with a novel adversarial loss, as well as new multi-scale generator and discriminator architectures. Furthermore, we extend our framework to interactive visual manipulation with two additional features. First, we incorporate object instance segmentation information, which enables object manipulations such as removing/adding objects and changing the object category. Second, we propose a method to generate diverse results given the same input, allowing users to edit the object appearance interactively. Human opinion studies demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms existing methods, advancing both the quality and the resolution of deep image synthesis and editing.Comment: v2: CVPR camera ready, adding more results for edge-to-photo example

Structural learning for large scale image classification

To leverage large-scale collaboratively-tagged (loosely-tagged) images for training a large number of classifiers to support large-scale image classification, we need to develop new frameworks to deal with the following issues: (1) spam tags, i.e., tags are not relevant to the semantic of the images; (2) loose object tags, i.e., multiple object tags are loosely given at the image level without their locations in the images; (3) missing object tags, i.e. some object tags are missed due to incomplete tagging; (4) inter-related object classes, i.e., some object classes are visually correlated and their classifiers need to be trained jointly instead of independently; (5) large scale object classes, which requires to limit the computational time complexity for classifier training algorithms as well as the storage spaces for intermediate results. To deal with these issues, we propose a structural learning framework which consists of the following key components: (1) cluster-based junk image filtering to address the issue of spam tags; (2) automatic tag-instance alignment to address the issue of loose object tags; (3) automatic missing object tag prediction; (4) object correlation network for inter-class visual correlation characterization to address the issue of missing tags; (5) large-scale structural learning with object correlation network for enhancing the discrimination power of object classifiers. To obtain enough numbers of labeled training images, our proposed framework leverages the abundant web images and their social tags. To make those web images usable, tag cleansing has to be done to neutralize the noise from user tagging preferences, in particularly junk tags, loose tags and missing tags. Then a discriminative learning algorithm is developed to train a large number of inter-related classifiers for achieving large-scale image classification, e.g., learning a large number of classifiers for categorizing large-scale images into a large number of inter-related object classes and image concepts. A visual concept network is first constructed for organizing enumorus object classes and image concepts according to their inter-concept visual correlations. The visual concept network is further used to: (a) identify inter-related learning tasks for classifier training; (b) determine groups of visually-similar object classes and image concepts; and (c) estimate the learning complexity for classifier training. A large-scale discriminative learning algorithm is developed for supporting multi-class classifier training and achieving accurate inter-group discrimination and effective intra-group separation. Our discriminative learning algorithm can significantly enhance the discrimination power of the classifiers and dramatically reduce the computational cost for large-scale classifier training

Unveiling the frontiers of deep learning: innovations shaping diverse domains

Deep learning (DL) enables the development of computer models that are capable of learning, visualizing, optimizing, refining, and predicting data. In recent years, DL has been applied in a range of fields, including audio-visual data processing, agriculture, transportation prediction, natural language, biomedicine, disaster management, bioinformatics, drug design, genomics, face recognition, and ecology. To explore the current state of deep learning, it is necessary to investigate the latest developments and applications of deep learning in these disciplines. However, the literature is lacking in exploring the applications of deep learning in all potential sectors. This paper thus extensively investigates the potential applications of deep learning across all major fields of study as well as the associated benefits and challenges. As evidenced in the literature, DL exhibits accuracy in prediction and analysis, makes it a powerful computational tool, and has the ability to articulate itself and optimize, making it effective in processing data with no prior training. Given its independence from training data, deep learning necessitates massive amounts of data for effective analysis and processing, much like data volume. To handle the challenge of compiling huge amounts of medical, scientific, healthcare, and environmental data for use in deep learning, gated architectures like LSTMs and GRUs can be utilized. For multimodal learning, shared neurons in the neural network for all activities and specialized neurons for particular tasks are necessary.Comment: 64 pages, 3 figures, 3 table