International Business Machines Corporation

Globalfoundries Inc.

Leland Stanford Junior University

Kailash Gopalakrishnan

Jungwook Choi

Vijayalakshmi Srinivasan

Chia-Yu Chen

Bahman Hekmatshoartabari

Tze-Chiang Chen

Ali Afzali-Ardakani

Ankur Agrawal

Silvia Melitta Mueller

Sunil K Shukla

Bruce Martin Fleischer

Naigang Wang

Rohit Sudhir Shenoy

Hemantha Kumar Wickramasinghe

Swagath Venkataramani

Jintao Zhang

Jinwook Oh

Chung H Lam

Jing Li

Victor Han

Geoffrey W Burr

Young Hoon Kwark

Daniel Brand

Xiao Sun

Robert K Montoye

Cedric Lichtenau

Andrew John Kellock

Sanchari Sen

Zhuo Wang

Daniel C Edelstein

Kevin K Chan

Balaram Sinharoy

Anthony Saporito

Xiao Lin Sun

Brian William Curran

Donald Stimson Bethune

Wilfried Ernst-August Haensch

Dongsoo Lee

Stephen McConnell Gates

Ramachandran Muralidhar

John Kenneth DeBrosse

David Brian Mitzi

Kerstin Claudia Schelm

Wei Wang

Yue Liang

Yulong Li

Pritish Narayanan

James D Plummer

Kumar R Virwani

Razvan Peter Figuli

Mingu Kang

Pierce I-Jen Chuang

Suyog Gupta

Ioana Monica Baldini Soares

Holger Horbach

Peter B Griffin

Islam Atta

Martin A Lutz

Lee M Saltzman

Charbel Sakr

Jiamin Ni

An apparatus includes a floating-point gradient register; an integer register; a memory bank; and an array of processing units. Each of the units includes a plurality of binary shifters having an integer input configured to obtain corresponding bits of a 4-bit integer multiplicand, and a shift-specifying input configured to obtain corresponding bits in an exponent field of a 4-bit floating point multiplier. The multiplier is specified in a mantissaless four-bit floating point format including a sign bit, three exponent bits, and no mantissa bits. An adder tree has a plurality of inputs coupled to outputs of the plurality of shifters, and a rounder has an input coupled to an output of the adder tree. The integer inputs are connected to the integer register; the shift-specifying inputs are connected to the floating-point gradient register; and outputs of the rounders are coupled to the memory bank.

Four-bit training for machine learning

Processing input data for transmittal to a data consumer such as an artificial intelligence engine is performed by arranging the input data into a uniform structure made up of sticks of data combined to form pages of sticks. A stick is any well-sized set of input data elements whereby the size of the stick is fixed. A masking pattern is established for sticks of data having certain ranges of invalid data for consumption of partial sticks while maintaining validity of the input data being transferred. The mask pattern is derived based on set-active-mask-and-value (SAMV) instructions. The derived mask pattern is carried forward for subsequent load instructions to the data consumer.

Padding input data for artificial intelligence accelerators

A combined function specified by an instruction is performed. The combined function includes a plurality of operations performed as part of one invocation of the combined function. The performing the combined function includes performing a matrix multiplication of a first tensor and a second tensor to obtain one or more intermediate results. The second tensor includes an adjusted weight tensor created using a multiplier. Values of a bias tensor are added to the one or more intermediate results to obtain one or more results for the combined function. The one or more results are at least a part of an output tensor.

Single function to perform combined matrix multiplication and bias add operations

An apparatus includes circuitry for a neural network that is configured to perform forward propagation neural network operations on floating point numbers having a first n-bit floating point format. The first n-bit floating point format has a configuration consisting of a sign bit, m exponent bits and p mantissa bits where m is greater than p. The circuitry is further configured to perform backward propagation neural network operations on floating point numbers having a second n-bit floating point format that is different than the first n-bit floating point format. The second n-bit floating point format has a configuration consisting of a sign bit, q exponent bits and r mantissa bits where q is greater than m and r is less than p.

Neural network circuitry having floating point format with asymmetric range

An apparatus for training and inferencing a neural network includes circuitry that is configured to generate a first weight having a first format including a first number of bits based at least in part on a second weight having a second format including a second number of bits and a residual having a third format including a third number of bits. The second number of bits and the third number of bits are each less than the first number of bits. The circuitry is further configured to update the second weight based at least in part on the first weight and to update the residual based at least in part on the updated second weight and the first weight. The circuitry is further configured to update the first weight based at least in part on the updated second weight and the updated residual.

Machine learning hardware having reduced precision parameter components for efficient parameter update

A method for improving performance of a predefined Deep Neural Network (DNN) convolution processing on a computing device includes inputting parameters, as input data into a processor on a computer that formalizes a design space exploration of a convolution mapping, on a predefined computer architecture that will execute the predefined convolution processing. The parameters are predefined as guided by a specification for the predefined convolution processing to be implemented by the convolution mapping and by a microarchitectural specification for the processor that will execute the predefined convolution processing. The processor calculates performance metrics for executing the predefined convolution processing on the computing device, as functions of the predefined parameters, as proxy estimates of performance of different possible design choices to implement the predefined convolution processing.

Method to map convolutional layers of deep neural network on a plurality of processing elements with SIMD execution units, private memories, and connected as a 2D systolic processor array

A system, having a memory that stores computer executable components, and a processor that executes the computer executable components, reduces data size in connection with training a neural network by exploiting spatial locality to weight matrices and effecting frequency transformation and compression. A receiving component receives neural network data in the form of a compressed frequency-domain weight matrix. A segmentation component segments the initial weight matrix into original sub-components, wherein respective original sub-components have spatial weights. A sampling component applies a generalized weight distribution to the respective original sub-components to generate respective normalized sub-components. A transform component applies a transform to the respective normalized sub-components. A cropping component crops high-frequency weights of the respective transformed normalized sub-components to yield a set of low-frequency normalized sub-components to generate a compressed representation of the original sub-components.

Compression of fully connected / recurrent layers of deep network(s) through enforcing spatial locality to weight matrices and effecting frequency compression

Indices of non-zero weights may be stored in an index register file included within each of a plurality of processor elements in a systolic array. Non-zero weights may be stored in a register file associated with the index register file. Input values (e.g., dense input values) corresponding to a single block in a data structure may be sent to the plurality of processor elements. Those of the input values corresponding to the indices of non-zero weights in the index register file may be selected for performing multiply-accumulate ('MAC') operation based on sending the plurality of input values to one or more of the plurality of processor elements. The indices of the plurality of non-zero weight are stored in an index data stick. The values of the plurality of non-zero weights are stored in a value data stick.

Exploiting fine-grained structured weight sparsity in systolic arrays

Techniques for operating on and calculating binary floating-point numbers using an enhanced floating-point number format are presented. The enhanced format can comprise a single sign bit, six bits for the exponent, and nine bits for the fraction. Using six bits for the exponent can provide an enhanced exponent range that facilitates desirably fast convergence of computing-intensive algorithms and low error rates for computing-intensive applications. The enhanced format can employ a specified definition for the lowest binade that enables the lowest binade to be used for zero and normal numbers; and a specified definition for the highest binade that enables it to be structured to have one data point used for a merged Not-a-Number (NaN)/infinity symbol and remaining data points used for finite numbers. The signs of zero and merged NaN/infinity can be 'don't care' terms. The enhanced format employs only one rounding mode, which is for rounding toward nearest up.

Enhanced low precision binary floating-point formatting

A systolic array can be configured to skip distributed operands that have zero-values, resulting in improved resource efficiency. A skip module is introduced to receive operands from memory, identify whether they have a zero value or not, and, if they are nonzero, generate an operand vector including an index before sending the operand vector to a processing element.

Sparse systolic array design

In an embodiment, a method includes configuring a specialized circuit for floating point computations using numbers represented by a hybrid format, wherein the hybrid format includes a first format and a second format. In the embodiment, the method includes operating the further configured specialized circuit to store an approximation of a numeric value in the first format during a forward pass for training a deep learning network. In the embodiment, the method includes operating the further configured specialized circuit to store an approximation of a second numeric value in the second format during a backward pass for training the deep learning network.

Hybrid floating point representation for deep learning acceleration

An apparatus includes a memory and a processor coupled to the memory. The processor includes first and second sets of arithmetic units having first and second precision for floating-point computations, the second precision being lower than the first precision. The processor is configured to obtain a machine learning model trained in the first precision, to utilize the second set of arithmetic units to perform inference on input data, to utilize the first set of arithmetic units to generate feedback for updating parameters of the second set of arithmetic units based on the inference performed on the input data by the second set of arithmetic units, to tune parameters of the second set of arithmetic units based at least in part on the feedback generated by the first set of arithmetic units, and to utilize the second set of arithmetic units with the tuned parameters to generate inference results.

Mixed precision capable hardware for tuning a machine learning model

Techniques for statistics-aware weight quantization are presented. To facilitate reducing the bit precision of weights, for a set of weights, a quantizer management component can estimate a quantization scale value to apply to a weight as a linear or non-linear function of the mean of a square of a weight value of the weight and the mean of an absolute value of the weight value, wherein the quantization scale value is determined to have a smaller quantization error than all, or at least almost all, other quantization errors associated with other quantization scale values. A quantizer component applies the quantization scale value to symmetrically and/or uniformly quantize weights of a layer of the set of weights to generate quantized weights, the weights being quantized using rounding. The respective quantized weights can be used to facilitate training and inference of a deep learning system.

Statistics-aware weight quantization

A convolutional neural network includes a front layer, a back layer, and a plurality of other layers that are connected between the front layer and the back layer. One of the other layers is a transition layer. A first precision is assigned to activations of neurons from the front layer back to the transition layer and a second precision is assigned to activations of the neurons from the transition layer back to the back layer. A third precision is assigned to weights of inputs to neurons from the front layer back to the transition layer and a fourth precision is assigned to weights of inputs to the neurons from the transition layer back to the back layer. In some embodiments the layers forward of the transition layer have a different convolutional kernel than the layers rearward of the transition layer.

System-aware selective quantization for performance optimized distributed deep learning

Embodiments for implementing a fused multiply-multiply-accumulate ('FMMA') unit by one or more processors in a computing system. Mantissas for two products, an exponent difference of the two products serving as an alignment shift amount for a product of the two products having a smallest exponent, and an alignment shift amount for an addend relative to an alternative product of the two product having a larger exponent may be determined in parallel. The addend may be aligned relative to the alternative product having the larger exponent. The product having the smallest exponent may be aligned relative to the alternative product having the larger exponent according to the alignment shift amount.

Ultra-low precision floating-point fused multiply-accumulate unit

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Kailash Gopalakrishnan