CompoundEye: A 0.24-4.17 TOPS Scalable Multi-Node DNN Processor for Image Recognition

This paper proposes a scalable DNN processor that can be flexibly reconfigured to maximize inference efficiency on a wide range of DNN models. The processor consists of 18 computing nodes with various precision modes support. To improve the computation throughput, we propose a sub-image parallelization strategy, where the original input image is divided into multiple sub-images and computed on multiple nodes in parallel. In addition, the cross-layer pipeline is implemented to improve resource utilization. The proposed processor is implemented in 28nm CMOS technology and achieves a peak performance of 4.17 TOPS and an energy efficiency of 2.08 TOPS/W.