A Low-Complexity Modified ThiNet Algorithm for Pruning Convolutional Neural Networks

ThiNet is a recent method for pruning convolutional neural networks. This method uses a norm of a subset of the components of the output resulting from the convolutional layer succeeding the layer from which the filters are to be removed for pruning the network. The ThiNet algorithm is very time-consuming, in view of the fact that the filters for removal are selected one by one iteratively. In this paper, we propose a modified version of ThiNet, in which the same information on the output of the same convolutional layer as used by ThiNet is employed to select all the filters together in a single step, for pruning the network. The proposed modified algorithm is shown to have a time-complexity that is only a small fraction of that of ThiNet or any other state-of-the-art algorithm and that the pruned network has almost the same reduction in its accuracy as that of the network pruned by ThiNet.