Convolutional neural network pruning method based on feature map sparsification

Abstract

A convolutional neural network pruning method based on feature map sparsification, which relates to how to compress the convolutional neural network to reduce the number of parameters and amount of computation so as to facilitate actual deployment, is provided. In the training process, by adding regularization to the feature map L1 or L2 after the activation layer in the loss function, the corresponding feature map channels have different sparsity. Under a certain pruned ratio, the convolution kernels corresponding to the channels are pruned according to the sparsity of the feature map channels. After fine-tune pruning, the network obtains new accuracy, and the pruned ratio is adjusted according to the change of accuracy before and after pruning. After multiple iterations, the near-optimal pruned ratio is found, and pruning is realized to the maximum extent under the condition that the accuracy does not decrease.