ACDSE: A Design Space Exploration Method for CNN Accelerator based on Adaptive Compression Mechanism

Customized accelerators for Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) can achieve better energy efficiency than general computing platforms. However, the design of a high-performance accelerator should take into account a variety of parameters and physical constraints. The increasing parameters and tighter constraints gradually complicate the design space, which poses new challenges to the capacity and efficiency of design space exploration methods. In this paper, we provide a novel design space exploration method named ACDSE for optimizing the design process of CNN accelerators. ACDSE implements the adaptive compression mechanism to dynamically adjust the search range and prune low-value design points according to the exploration states. As a result, it can focus on valuable subspace while also improving exploration capacity and efficiency. Additionally, we implement ACDSE to address the problem of CNN accelerator latency optimization. The experiment indicates that, compared to former DSE methods, ACDSE can reduce latency and increase efficiency by 1.39x-5.07x and 2.07x-43.87x, respectively, under the most stringent constraint conditions, demonstrating its superior adaptability to the complicated design space.