Paper ID: 2408.02473

Toward Attention-based TinyML: A Heterogeneous Accelerated Architecture and Automated Deployment Flow

Philip Wiese, Gamze İslamoğlu, Moritz Scherer, Luka Macan, Victor J. B. Jung, Alessio Burrello, Francesco Conti, Luca Benini

One of the challenges for Tiny Machine Learning (tinyML) is keeping up with the evolution of Machine Learning models from Convolutional Neural Networks to Transformers. We address this by leveraging a heterogeneous architectural template coupling RISC-V processors with hardwired accelerators supported by an automated deployment flow. We demonstrate an Attention-based model in a tinyML power envelope with an octa-core cluster coupled with an accelerator for quantized Attention. Our deployment flow enables an end-to-end 8-bit MobileBERT, achieving leading-edge energy efficiency and throughput of 2960 GOp/J and 154 GOp/s at 32.5 Inf/s consuming 52.0 mW (0.65 V, 22 nm FD-SOI technology).

Submitted: Aug 5, 2024