{"title":"GEBA: Gradient-Error-Based Approximation of Activation Functions","authors":"Changmin Ye;Doo Seok Jeong","doi":"10.1109/JETCAS.2023.3328890","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Computing-in-memory (CIM) macros aiming at accelerating deep learning operations at low power need activation function (AF) units on the same die to reduce their host-dependency. Versatile CIM macros need to include reconfigurable AF units at high precision and high efficiency in hardware usage. To this end, we propose the gradient-error-based approximation (GEBA) of AFs, which approximates various types of AFs in discrete input domains at high precision. GEBA reduces the approximation error by ca. 49.7%, 67.3%, 81.4%, 60.1% (for sigmoid, tanh, GELU, swish in FP32), compared with the uniform input-based approximation using the same memory as GEBA.","PeriodicalId":48827,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10302226/","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Computing-in-memory (CIM) macros aiming at accelerating deep learning operations at low power need activation function (AF) units on the same die to reduce their host-dependency. Versatile CIM macros need to include reconfigurable AF units at high precision and high efficiency in hardware usage. To this end, we propose the gradient-error-based approximation (GEBA) of AFs, which approximates various types of AFs in discrete input domains at high precision. GEBA reduces the approximation error by ca. 49.7%, 67.3%, 81.4%, 60.1% (for sigmoid, tanh, GELU, swish in FP32), compared with the uniform input-based approximation using the same memory as GEBA.
期刊介绍:
The IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems is published quarterly and solicits, with particular emphasis on emerging areas, special issues on topics that cover the entire scope of the IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Society, namely the theory, analysis, design, tools, and implementation of circuits and systems, spanning their theoretical foundations, applications, and architectures for signal and information processing.