CQNN: a CGRA-based QNN Framework

Abstract

We propose a novel Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architecture-based (CGRA) QNN acceleration framework, CQNN. CQNN has a large number of basic components for binary functions. By programming CQNN at runtime according to the target QNN models, these basic components are integrated efficiently to support QNN functions with any data-width and hyper-parameter requirements and CQNN is reconfigured to have the optimal architecture for the target models. The framework includes compiler, architecture design, simulator and RTL generator. Experimental results show CQNNs can complete the inference of AlexNet and VGG-16 within 0.13ms and 2.63ms.