Dustin: A 16-Cores Parallel Ultra-Low-Power Cluster With 2b-to-32b Fully Flexible Bit-Precision and Vector Lockstep Execution Mode

卷:70

Article

关键词: ENERGY-EFFICIENT;    NEURAL-NETWORKS;    ACCELERATOR;   

DOI  :  10.1109/TCSI.2023.3254810

来源: SCIE

【 摘 要 】

Computationally intensive algorithms such as Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are becoming killer applications for edge devices. Porting heavily data-parallel algorithms on resource-constrained and battery-powered devices while retaining the flexibility granted by instruction processor-based architectures poses several challenges related to memory footprint, computational throughput, and energy efficiency. Low-bitwidth and mixed-precision arithmetic have been proven to be valid strategies for tackling these problems. We present Dustin, a fully programmable compute cluster integrating 16 RISC-V cores capable of 2-to 32-bit arithmetic and all possible mixed-precision combinations. In addition to a conventional Multiple-Instruction Multiple-Data (MIMD) processing paradigm, Dustin introduces a Vector Lockstep Execution Mode (VLEM) to minimize power consumption in highly data-parallel kernels. In VLEM, a single leader core fetches instructions and broadcasts them to the 15 follower cores. Clock gating Instruction Fetch (IF) stages and private caches of the follower cores leads to 38% power reduction. The cluster, implemented in 65 nm CMOS technology, achieves a peak performance of 58 GOPS and a peak efficiency of 1.15 TOPS/W.

【 授权许可】

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