A Multithreaded CGRA for Convolutional Neural Network Processing

Convolutional neural network (CNN) is an essential model to achieve high accuracy in various machine learning applications, such as image recognition and natural language processing. One of the important issues for CNN acceleration with high energy efficiency and processing performance is efficient data reuse by exploiting the inherent data locality. In this paper, we propose a novel CGRA (Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Array) architecture with time-domain multithreading for exploiting input data locality. The multithreading on each processing element enables the input data reusing through multiple computation periods. This paper presents the accelerator design performance analysis of the proposed architecture. We examine the structure of memory subsystems, as well as the architecture of the computing array, to supply required data with minimal performance overhead. We explore efficient architecture design alternatives based on the characteristics of modern CNN configurations. The evaluation results show that the available bandwidth of the external memory can be utilized efficiently when the output plane is wider (in earlier layers of many CNNs) while the input data locality can be utilized maximally when the number of output channel is larger (in later layers).