Methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture to reorder n-dimensional sparse data into groups of data elements that can be collocated in a memory

Abstract

Exemplary embodiments maintain spatial locality of the data being processed by a sparse CNN. The spatial locality is maintained by reordering the data to preserve spatial locality. The reordering may be performed on data elements and on data for groups of co-located data elements referred to herein as 'chunks'. Thus, the data may be reordered into chunks, where each chunk contains data for spatially co-located data elements, and in addition, chunks may be organized so that spatially located chunks are together. The use of chunks helps to reduce the need to re-fetch data during processing. Chunk sizes may be chosen based on the memory constraints of the processing logic (e.g., cache sizes).