Hardware Accelerated Deep Learning Framework (Handle)

Type: National Project Project

Duration: from 2018 Jul 16 to 2022 Jul 15

Financed by: FCT

Prime Contractor: R - INESC-ID Lisboa (Other) - Lisboa, Portugal

Project Web Site: http://hpcas.inesc-id.pt/~handle/

Recent advances in Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) provided important breakthroughs in many domains and are seen as the likely solution towards the development of next generations intelligent systems. This has been achieved by relying on deeper and sparse networks, by integrating new layer types and novel activation functions, and through new training methodologies. However, DNNs are characterized by long execution times, a problem which is expected to worsen as networks become more complex and less susceptible to GPU acceleration. To overcome this issue, a new scalable hardware accelerator will be proposed and deployed on FPGA-technology to support state-of-the-art DNNs by: alleviating its computational complexity and memory bandwidth problem; supporting new complex DNN layers and activation functions; and supporting sparse and non-uniform neural networks. The envisaged solutions will be compared with state-of-the-art off-the-shelf alternatives regarding performance and energy-efficiency

Partnerships

  • Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) (Other) - Lisbon, Portugal
  • Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) Coimbra (Other) -Portugal

Principal Investigators

Members