Eyeriss v2: A Flexible Accelerator for Emerging Deep Neural Networks on Mobile Devices

A recent trend in DNN development is to extend the reach of deep learning applications to platforms that are more resource and energy constrained, e.g., mobile devices. These endeavors aim to reduce the DNN model size and improve the hardware processing efficiency, and have resulted in DNNs that are much more compact in their structures and/or have high data sparsity. These compact or sparse models are different from the traditional large ones in that there is much more variation in their layer shapes and sizes, and often require specialized hardware to exploit sparsity for performance improvement. Thus, many DNN accelerators designed for large DNNs do not perform well on these models. In this work, we present Eyeriss v2, a DNN accelerator architecture designed for running compact and sparse DNNs. To deal with the widely varying layer shapes and sizes, it introduces a highly flexible on-chip network, called hierarchical mesh, that can adapt to the different amounts of data reuse and bandwidth requirements of different data types, which improves the utilization of the computation resources. Furthermore, Eyeriss v2 can process sparse data directly in the compressed domain for both weights and activations, and therefore is able to improve both processing speed and energy efficiency with sparse models. Overall, with sparse MobileNet, Eyeriss v2 in a 65nm CMOS process achieves a throughput of 1470.6 inferences/sec and 2560.3 inferences/J at a batch size of 1, which is 12.6x faster and 2.5x more energy efficient than the original Eyeriss running MobileNet. We also present an analysis methodology called Eyexam that provides a systematic way of understanding the performance limits for DNN processors as a function of specific characteristics of the DNN model and accelerator design; it applies these characteristics as sequential steps to increasingly tighten the bound on the performance limits.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems. This extended version on arXiv also includes Eyexam in the appendi

Factors Predicting Emotional Cue-Responding Behaviors of Nurses in Taiwan: An Observational Study

Objective Responding to emotional cues is an essential element of therapeutic communication. The purpose of this study is to examine nurses' competence of responding to emotional cues (CRE) and related factors while interacting with standardized patients with cancer. Methods This is an exploratory and predictive correlational study. A convenience sample of registered nurses who have passed the probationary period in southern Taiwan was recruited to participate in 15-minute videotaped interviews with standardized patients. The Medical Interview Aural Rating Scale was used to describe standardized patients' emotional cues and to measure nurses' CRE. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to evaluate nurses' anxiety level before the conversation. We used descriptive statistics to describe the data and stepwise regression to examine the predictors of nurses' CRE. Results A total of 110 nurses participated in the study. Regardless of the emotional cue level, participants predominately responded to cues with inappropriate distancing strategies. Prior formal communication training, practice unit, length of nursing practice, and educational level together explain 36.3% variances of the nurses' CRE. Conclusions This study is the first to explore factors related to Taiwanese nurses' CRE. Compared to nurses in other countries, Taiwanese nurses tended to respond to patients' emotional cues with more inappropriate strategies. We also identified significant predictors of CRE that show the importance of communication training. Future research and education programs are needed to enhance nurses' CRE and to advocate for emotion-focused communication

Uncertainty Estimation on Sequential Labeling via Uncertainty Transmission

Sequential labeling is a task predicting labels for each token in a sequence, such as Named Entity Recognition (NER). NER tasks aim to extract entities and predict their labels given a text, which is important in information extraction. Although previous works have shown great progress in improving NER performance, uncertainty estimation on NER (UE-NER) is still underexplored but essential. This work focuses on UE-NER, which aims to estimate uncertainty scores for the NER predictions. Previous uncertainty estimation models often overlook two unique characteristics of NER: the connection between entities (i.e., one entity embedding is learned based on the other ones) and wrong span cases in the entity extraction subtask. Therefore, we propose a Sequential Labeling Posterior Network (SLPN) to estimate uncertainty scores for the extracted entities, considering uncertainty transmitted from other tokens. Moreover, we have defined an evaluation strategy to address the specificity of wrong-span cases. Our SLPN has achieved significant improvements on two datasets, such as a 5.54-point improvement in AUPR on the MIT-Restaurant dataset.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Managing compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code: China's strategies and their implications

With the problems of doping in sport becoming more serious, the World Anti-Doping Code was drafted by the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2003 and became effective one year later. Since its passage, the Code has been renewed four times, with the fourth and latest version promulgated in January 2015. The Code was intended to tackle the problems of doping in sports through cooperation with governments to ensure fair competition as well as the health of athletes. To understand China’s strategies for managing compliance with the Code and also the implications behind those strategies, this study borrows ideas from theories of compliance. China’s high levels of performance in sport, judged by medal success, have undoubtedly placed the country near the top of the global sports field. Therefore, how China acts in relation to international organizations, and especially how it responds to the World Anti-Doping Agency, is highly significant for the future of elite sport and for the world anti-doping regime. Through painstaking efforts, the researchers visited Beijing to conduct field research four times and interviewed a total of 22 key sports personnel, including officials at the General Administration of Sports of China, the China Anti-Doping Agency, and individual sport associations, as well as sport scholars and leading officials of China’s professional sports leagues. In response to the World Anti-Doping Agency, China developed strategies related to seven institutional factors: ‘monitoring’, ‘verification’, ‘horizontal linkages’, ‘nesting’, ‘capacity building’, ‘national concern’ and ‘institutional profile’. As for the implications, the Chinese government is willing and able to comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency Code. In other words, the Chinese government is willing to pay a high price in terms of money, manpower and material resources so that it can recover from the disgrace suffered as a result of doping scandals in the 1990s. The government wants to ensure that China’s prospects as a participant, bidder and host of mega sporting events are not compromised, especially as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing

Integrin-mediated membrane blebbing is dependent on the NHE1 and NCX1 activities.

Integrin-mediated signal transduction and membrane blebbing have been well studied to modulate cell adhesion, spreading and migration^1-6^. However, the relationship between membrane blebbing and integrin signaling has not been explored. Here we show that integrin-ligand interaction induces membrane blebbing and membrane permeability change. We found that sodium-proton exchanger 1 (NHE1) and sodium-calcium exchanger 1 (NCX1) are located in the membrane blebbing sites and inhibition of NHE1 disrupts membrane blebbing and decreases membrane permeability change. However, inhibition of NCX1 enhances cell blebbing to cause cell swelling which is correlated with an intracellular sodium accumulation induced by NHE17. These data suggest that sodium influx induced by NHE1 is a driving force for membrane blebbing growth, while sodium efflux induced by NCX1 in a reverse mode causes membrane blebbing retraction. Together, these data reveal a novel function of NHE1 and NCX1 in membrane permeability change and blebbing and provide the link for integrin signaling and membrane blebbing

The characteristics of heat transfer in plate phase change energy storage unit

Abstract : was used to simulate the heat storage and release process of the plate phase change materials (PCM) energy storage unit. The simulation results show that the main heat transfer zone will advance along the direction of the flat plate (air flow direction), and the speed of the main heat transfer zone is proportional to the air velocity with the continuous heat transfer process. In heat storage, the speed of the main heat transfer zone will accelerate with the increase of air velocities; while in the heat release process, the main heat transfer zone will accelerate with the increase of air velocities. Meanwhile, the liquid phase ratio of PCM material is also changing continuously which increases with time and is affected by the liquefaction or solidification speed. The faster the liquefaction and solidification speed are, the faster it will change. As the fluid inlet velocity increases, the heat storage exothermic efficiency also increases as the heat transfer fluid inlet velocity increases. Overall, the total heat transfer rate is gradually reduced compared with the initial heat transfer, and then tends to be consistent with the temperature of the heat transferfluid

Do resting brain dynamics predict oddball evoked-potential?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The oddball paradigm is widely applied to the investigation of cognitive function in neuroscience and in neuropsychiatry. Whether cortical oscillation in the resting state can predict the elicited oddball event-related potential (ERP) is still not clear. This study explored the relationship between resting electroencephalography (EEG) and oddball ERPs. The regional powers of 18 electrodes across delta, theta, alpha and beta frequencies were correlated with the amplitude and latency of N1, P2, N2 and P3 components of oddball ERPs. A multivariate analysis based on partial least squares (PLS) was applied to further examine the spatial pattern revealed by multiple correlations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Higher synchronization in the resting state, especially at the alpha spectrum, is associated with higher neural responsiveness and faster neural propagation, as indicated by the higher amplitude change of N1/N2 and shorter latency of P2. None of the resting quantitative EEG indices predict P3 latency and amplitude. The PLS analysis confirms that the resting cortical dynamics which explains N1/N2 amplitude and P2 latency does not show regional specificity, indicating a global property of the brain.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study differs from previous approaches by relating dynamics in the resting state to neural responsiveness in the activation state. Our analyses suggest that the neural characteristics carried by resting brain dynamics modulate the earlier/automatic stage of target detection.</p