{"title":"Density enhancement of a neural network using FPGAs and run-time reconfiguration","authors":"James G. Eldredge, B. L. Hutchings","doi":"10.1109/FPGA.1994.315611","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Run-time reconfiguration is a way of more fully exploiting the flexbility of reconfigurable FPGAs. The run-time reconfiguration artificial neural network (RRANN) uses ran-time reconfiguration to increase the hardware density of FPGAs. The RRANN architecture also allows large amounts of parallelism to be used and is very scalable. RRANN divides the back-propagation algorithm into three sequential executed stages and configures the FPGAs to execute only one stage at a time. The FPGAs are reconfigured as part of normal execution in order to change stages. Using reconfigurability in this way increases the number of hardware neurons a single Xilinx XC3090 can implement by 500%. Performance is effected by reconfiguration overhead, but this overhead becomes insignificant in large networks. This overhead is made even more insignificant with improved configuration methods. Run-time reconfiguration is a flexible realization of the time/space trade-off. The RRANN architecture has been designed and built using commercially available hardware, and its performance has been measured.<<ETX>>","PeriodicalId":138179,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on FPGA's for Custom Computing Machines","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1994-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"117","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on FPGA's for Custom Computing Machines","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FPGA.1994.315611","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 117
Abstract
Run-time reconfiguration is a way of more fully exploiting the flexbility of reconfigurable FPGAs. The run-time reconfiguration artificial neural network (RRANN) uses ran-time reconfiguration to increase the hardware density of FPGAs. The RRANN architecture also allows large amounts of parallelism to be used and is very scalable. RRANN divides the back-propagation algorithm into three sequential executed stages and configures the FPGAs to execute only one stage at a time. The FPGAs are reconfigured as part of normal execution in order to change stages. Using reconfigurability in this way increases the number of hardware neurons a single Xilinx XC3090 can implement by 500%. Performance is effected by reconfiguration overhead, but this overhead becomes insignificant in large networks. This overhead is made even more insignificant with improved configuration methods. Run-time reconfiguration is a flexible realization of the time/space trade-off. The RRANN architecture has been designed and built using commercially available hardware, and its performance has been measured.<>