Xilinx, Inc.

Sean Settle

Ashish Sirasao

Ehsan Ghasemi

Elliott Delaye

Jindrich Zejda

Aaron Ng

Xiao Teng

Ralph D Wittig

Sonal Santan

Soren T Soe

Yongjun Wu

Zhao Ma

Embodiments herein describe techniques for interfacing a neural network application with a neural network accelerator using a library. The neural network application may execute on a host computing system while the neural network accelerator executes on a massively parallel hardware system, e.g., a FPGA. The library operates a pipeline for submitting the tasks received from the neural network application to the neural network accelerator. In one embodiment, the pipeline includes a pre-processing stage, an FPGA execution stage, and a post-processing stage which each correspond to different threads. When receiving a task from the neural network application, the library generates a packet that includes the information required for the different stages in the pipeline to perform the tasks. Because the stages correspond to different threads, the library can process multiple packets in parallel which can increase the utilization of the neural network accelerator on the hardware system.

Machine learning runtime library for neural network acceleration

In the disclosed methods and systems for processing in a neural network system, a host computer system writes a plurality of weight matrices associated with a plurality of layers of a neural network to a memory shared with a neural network accelerator. The host computer system further assembles a plurality of per-layer instructions into an instruction package. Each per-layer instruction specifies processing of a respective layer of the plurality of layers of the neural network, and respective offsets of weight matrices in a shared memory. The host computer system writes input data and the instruction package to the shared memory. The neural network accelerator reads the instruction package from the shared memory and processes the plurality of per-layer instructions of the instruction package.

Multi-layer neural network processing by a neural network accelerator using host communicated merged weights and a package of per-layer instructions

An example multiply accumulate (MACC) circuit includes: a multiply-accumulator having an accumulator output register; a quantizer, coupled to the multiply accumulator; and a control circuit coupled to the multiply-accumulator and the quantizer, the control circuit configured to provide control data to the quantizer, the control data indicative of a most-significant bit (MSB) to least significant bit (LSB) range for selecting bit indices from the accumulator output register.

Software-driven design optimization for fixed-point multiply-accumulate circuitry

Examples described herein relate to dynamically structured single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instructions, and systems and circuits implementing such dynamically structured SIMD instructions. An example is a method for processing data. A first SIMD structure is determined by a processor. A characteristic of the first SIMD structure is altered by the processor to obtain a second SIMD structure. An indication of the second SIMD structure is communicated from the processor to a numerical engine. Data is packed by the numerical engine into an SIMD instruction according to the second SIMD structure. The SIMD instruction is transmitted from the numerical engine.

Dynamically structured single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instructions

An example multiply accumulate (MACC) circuit includes a multiply-accumulator having an accumulator output register, a scaler, coupled to the multiply accumulator, and a control circuit coupled to the multiply-accumulator and the scaler. The control circuit is configured to provide control data to the scaler, the control data indicative of: a most-significant bit (MSB) to least significant bit (LSB) range for selecting bit indices from the accumulator output register for implementing a first right shift; a multiplier; and a second right shift.

Software-driven design optimization for mapping between floating-point and fixed-point multiply accumulators

A and a request generator circuit is configured to read data elements of a three-dimensional (3-D) input feature map (IFM) from a memory and store a subset of the data elements in one of a plurality of N line buffers. Each line buffer is configured for storage of M data elements. A pixel iterator circuit is coupled to the line buffers and is configured to generate a sequence of addresses for reading the stored data elements from the line buffers based on a sequence of IFM height values and a sequence of IFM width values.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Sean Settle