FPGA Implementation of Convolutional Neural Networks with Fixed-Point Calculations

Neural network-based methods for image processing are becoming widely used in practical applications. Modern neural networks are computationally expensive and require specialized hardware, such as graphics processing units. Since such hardware is not always available in real life applications, there is a compelling need for the design of neural networks for mobile devices. Mobile neural networks typically have reduced number of parameters and require a relatively small number of arithmetic operations. However, they usually still are executed at the software level and use floating-point calculations. The use of mobile networks without further optimization may not provide sufficient performance when high processing speed is required, for example, in real-time video processing (30 frames per second). In this study, we suggest optimizations to speed up computations in order to efficiently use already trained neural networks on a mobile device. Specifically, we propose an approach for speeding up neural networks by moving computation from software to hardware and by using fixed-point calculations instead of floating-point. We propose a number of methods for neural network architecture design to improve the performance with fixed-point calculations. We also show an example of how existing datasets can be modified and adapted for the recognition task in hand. Finally, we present the design and the implementation of a floating-point gate array-based device to solve the practical problem of real-time handwritten digit classification from mobile camera video feed

Analysis of Posit and Bfloat Arithmetic of Real Numbers for Machine Learning

Modern computational tasks are often required to not only guarantee predefined accuracy, but get the result fast. Optimizing calculations using floating point numbers, as opposed to integers, is a non-trivial task. For this reason, there is a need to explore new ways to improve such operations. This paper presents analysis and comparison of various floating point formats – float, posit and bfloat. One of the promising areas in which the problem of using such values can be considered to be the most acute is neural networks. That is why we pay special attention to algorithms of linear algebra and artificial intelligence to assess efficiency of new data types in this area. The research results showed that software implementations of posit16 and posit32 have high accuracy, but they are not particularly fast; on the other hand, bfloat16 is not much different from float32 in accuracy, but significantly surpasses it in performance for large amounts of data and complex machine learning algorithms. Thus, posit16 can be used in systems with less stringent performance requirements, as well as in conditions of limited computer memory; and also in cases when bfloat16 cannot provide required accuracy. As for bfloat16, it can speed up systems based on the IEEE 754 standard, but it cannot solve all the problems of conventional floating point arithmetic. Thus, although posits and bfloats are not a full fledged replacement for float, they provide (under certain conditions) advantages that can be useful for implementation of machine learning algorithms