PoseAgent: Budget-Constrained 6D Object Pose Estimation via Reinforcement Learning

State-of-the-art computer vision algorithms often achieve efficiency by making discrete choices about which hypotheses to explore next. This allows allocation of computational resources to promising candidates, however, such decisions are non-differentiable. As a result, these algorithms are hard to train in an end-to-end fashion. In this work we propose to learn an efficient algorithm for the task of 6D object pose estimation. Our system optimizes the parameters of an existing state-of-the art pose estimation system using reinforcement learning, where the pose estimation system now becomes the stochastic policy, parametrized by a CNN. Additionally, we present an efficient training algorithm that dramatically reduces computation time. We show empirically that our learned pose estimation procedure makes better use of limited resources and improves upon the state-of-the-art on a challenging dataset. Our approach enables differentiable end-to-end training of complex algorithmic pipelines and learns to make optimal use of a given computational budget

Cache-aware Performance Modeling and Prediction for Dense Linear Algebra

Countless applications cast their computational core in terms of dense linear algebra operations. These operations can usually be implemented by combining the routines offered by standard linear algebra libraries such as BLAS and LAPACK, and typically each operation can be obtained in many alternative ways. Interestingly, identifying the fastest implementation -- without executing it -- is a challenging task even for experts. An equally challenging task is that of tuning each routine to performance-optimal configurations. Indeed, the problem is so difficult that even the default values provided by the libraries are often considerably suboptimal; as a solution, normally one has to resort to executing and timing the routines, driven by some form of parameter search. In this paper, we discuss a methodology to solve both problems: identifying the best performing algorithm within a family of alternatives, and tuning algorithmic parameters for maximum performance; in both cases, we do not execute the algorithms themselves. Instead, our methodology relies on timing and modeling the computational kernels underlying the algorithms, and on a technique for tracking the contents of the CPU cache. In general, our performance predictions allow us to tune dense linear algebra algorithms within few percents from the best attainable results, thus allowing computational scientists and code developers alike to efficiently optimize their linear algebra routines and codes.Comment: Submitted to PMBS1

MILO : a microarchitecture and logic optimizer

In this report we discuss strengths and weaknesses of logic synthesis systems and describe a system for microarchitectural and logic optimization. Our system uses a set of algorithms for synthesizing SSI/MSI macros from parameterized microarchitecture components. In addition, it uses rules for optimizing both at the microarchitecture and logic level. The system increases designer productivity and requires less design knowledge and experience from circuit engineers

A Generic Framework for Engineering Graph Canonization Algorithms

The state-of-the-art tools for practical graph canonization are all based on the individualization-refinement paradigm, and their difference is primarily in the choice of heuristics they include and in the actual tool implementation. It is thus not possible to make a direct comparison of how individual algorithmic ideas affect the performance on different graph classes. We present an algorithmic software framework that facilitates implementation of heuristics as independent extensions to a common core algorithm. It therefore becomes easy to perform a detailed comparison of the performance and behaviour of different algorithmic ideas. Implementations are provided of a range of algorithms for tree traversal, target cell selection, and node invariant, including choices from the literature and new variations. The framework readily supports extraction and visualization of detailed data from separate algorithm executions for subsequent analysis and development of new heuristics. Using collections of different graph classes we investigate the effect of varying the selections of heuristics, often revealing exactly which individual algorithmic choice is responsible for particularly good or bad performance. On several benchmark collections, including a newly proposed class of difficult instances, we additionally find that our implementation performs better than the current state-of-the-art tools