59,530 research outputs found
Training deep neural networks with low precision multiplications
Multipliers are the most space and power-hungry arithmetic operators of the
digital implementation of deep neural networks. We train a set of
state-of-the-art neural networks (Maxout networks) on three benchmark datasets:
MNIST, CIFAR-10 and SVHN. They are trained with three distinct formats:
floating point, fixed point and dynamic fixed point. For each of those datasets
and for each of those formats, we assess the impact of the precision of the
multiplications on the final error after training. We find that very low
precision is sufficient not just for running trained networks but also for
training them. For example, it is possible to train Maxout networks with 10
bits multiplications.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, Accepted as a workshop contribution at ICLR 201
ADaPTION: Toolbox and Benchmark for Training Convolutional Neural Networks with Reduced Numerical Precision Weights and Activation
Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are
useful for many practical tasks in machine learning. Synaptic weights, as well
as neuron activation functions within the deep network are typically stored
with high-precision formats, e.g. 32 bit floating point. However, since storage
capacity is limited and each memory access consumes power, both storage
capacity and memory access are two crucial factors in these networks. Here we
present a method and present the ADaPTION toolbox to extend the popular deep
learning library Caffe to support training of deep CNNs with reduced numerical
precision of weights and activations using fixed point notation. ADaPTION
includes tools to measure the dynamic range of weights and activations. Using
the ADaPTION tools, we quantized several CNNs including VGG16 down to 16-bit
weights and activations with only 0.8% drop in Top-1 accuracy. The
quantization, especially of the activations, leads to increase of up to 50% of
sparsity especially in early and intermediate layers, which we exploit to skip
multiplications with zero, thus performing faster and computationally cheaper
inference.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
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