Deep Neural Networks Compiler for a Trace-Based Accelerator

Abstract Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are the algorithm of choice for image processing applications. CNNs are a highly parallel workload that leads to the emergence of custom hardware accelerators. Deep Learning (DL) models specialized in different tasks require programmable custom hardware and a compiler/mapper to efficiently translate different CNNs into an efficient dataflow in the accelerator. The goal of this paper is to present a compiler for running CNNs on programmable custom hardware accelerators with a domain-specific ISA that targets CNNs. In this work, the compiler was evaluated and tested on a hardware accelerator that was presented in [18]. The compiler uses model definition files created from popular frameworks to generate custom instructions. The model goes through static compilation and different levels of hardware aware optimizations that improve performance and data reuse of the generated program. The software also exposes an interface to run on various FPGA platforms, providing an end-to-end solution. Various CNN models were benchmarked on different systems while scaling the number of processing units.