CSCC: Convolution Split Compression Calculation Algorithm for Deep Neural Network

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have become one of the most successful machine learning techniques for image and video processing. The most computationally intensive part of the CNN is the convolutional layers, which have the multi-channel image and multiple kernels. However, due to the network pruning operation and the application of RELU activation function operation in the training process, numerous zero values are generated in the network. This paper proposes the convolution split compression calculation (CSCC) algorithm, which improves the performance of the convolution layer by utilizing the sparse characteristic of the feature map. In the CSCC algorithm, first, the feature map is directly converted into a sparse matrix of compressed sparse row (CSR) format, which avoids expanding feature map to an intermediate matrix and reduces the memory space consumption. Second, the convolution kernel is converted into a vector. Finally, the convolution result is obtained by the sparse matrix vector multiplication (SpMV). The experimental results show that the CSCC algorithm has a good advantage in computation speed and memory consumption compared with the other convolution algorithms.