Hardware accelerator for convolutional neural networks and method of operation thereof

Abstract

An accelerator for processing of a convolutional neural network (CNN) includes a compute core having a plurality of compute units. Each compute unit includes a first memory cache configured to store at least one vector in a map trace, a second memory cache configured to store at least one vector in a kernel trace, and a plurality of vector multiply-accumulate units (vMACs) connected to the first and second memory caches. Each vMAC includes a plurality of multiply-accumulate units (MACs). Each MAC includes a multiplier unit configured to multiply a first word that of the at least one vector in the map trace by a second word of the at least one vector in the kernel trace to produce an intermediate product, and an adder unit that adds the intermediate product to a third word to generate a sum of the intermediate product and the third word.