A case for efficient accelerator design space exploration via bayesian optimization

B Reagen, JM Hernández-Lobato… - 2017 IEEE/ACM …, 2017 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
2017 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and …, 2017ieeexplore.ieee.org
In this paper we propose using machine learning to improve the design of deep neural
network hardware accelerators. We show how to adapt multi-objective Bayesian
optimization to overcome a challenging design problem: optimizing deep neural network
hardware accelerators for both accuracy and energy efficiency. DNN accelerators exhibit all
aspects of a challenging optimization space: the landscape is rough, evaluating designs is
expensive, the objectives compete with each other, and both design spaces (algorithmic and …
In this paper we propose using machine learning to improve the design of deep neural network hardware accelerators. We show how to adapt multi-objective Bayesian optimization to overcome a challenging design problem: optimizing deep neural network hardware accelerators for both accuracy and energy efficiency. DNN accelerators exhibit all aspects of a challenging optimization space: the landscape is rough, evaluating designs is expensive, the objectives compete with each other, and both design spaces (algorithmic and microarchitectural) are unwieldy. With multi-objective Bayesian optimization, the design space exploration is made tractable and the design points found vastly outperform traditional methods across all metrics of interest.
ieeexplore.ieee.org