New heterogeneous computing paradigms on dedicated hardware with increased
parallelization, such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), offer exciting
solutions with large potential gains. The growing applications of machine
learning algorithms in particle physics for simulation, reconstruction, and
analysis are naturally deployed on such platforms. We demonstrate that the
acceleration of machine learning inference as a web service represents a
heterogeneous computing solution for particle physics experiments that
potentially requires minimal modification to the current computing model. As
examples, we retrain the ResNet-50 convolutional neural network to demonstrate
state-of-the-art performance for top quark jet tagging at the LHC and apply a
ResNet-50 model with transfer learning for neutrino event classification. Using
Project Brainwave by Microsoft to accelerate the ResNet-50 image classification
model, we achieve average inference times of 60 (10) milliseconds with our
experimental physics software framework using Brainwave as a cloud (edge or
on-premises) service, representing an improvement by a factor of approximately
30 (175) in model inference latency over traditional CPU inference in current
experimental hardware. A single FPGA service accessed by many CPUs achieves a
throughput of 600--700 inferences per second using an image batch of one,
comparable to large batch-size GPU throughput and significantly better than
small batch-size GPU throughput. Deployed as an edge or cloud service for the
particle physics computing model, coprocessor accelerators can have a higher
duty cycle and are potentially much more cost-effective.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures, 2 table