Space-Efficient TREC for Enabling Deep Learning on Microcontrollers

Jiesong Liu, Feng Zhang, Jiawei Guan, Hsin-Hsuan Sung, Xiaoguang Guo, Xiaoyong Du, Xipeng Shen

Abstract: Deploying deep neural networks (DNNs) for a resource-constrained environment and achieving satisfactory performance is challenging. It is especially so on microcontrollers for their stringent space and computing power. This paper focuses on new ways to make TREC, an optimization recently proposed to enable computation reuse in DNNs, space and time efficient on Microcontrollers. The solution maximizes the performance benefits while keeping the DNN accuracy stable. Experiments show that the solution eliminates over 96% computations in DNNs and makes them fit well into microcontrollers, producing 3.4-5× speedups with only marginal accuracy loss.