Neural processor microarchitecture design for CNN processing acceleration

Mixed reality systems that integrate the real and digital worlds have recently gained popularity. The development of mixed reality devices in the form of wearable devices has been a significant trend in recent years. Key challenges in designing wearable mixed reality devices include reducing power consumption, enhancing productivity, and minimizing the size of the device. To address these challenges, neural processors are being incorporated into mixed reality systems. These are specialized hardware accelerators for convolutional neural network (CNN) processing. The use of neural processors is due to the fact that most environmental analysis and visualizations in mixed reality rely on CNNs. The use of these energy-efficient, high-performance processing devices enables increased comfort in using the wearable device through the high-performance processing of environmental data on a compact device. <br/> <br/> The paper is devoted to the design of the microarchitecture of a neural processor for hardware acceleration of CNN processing based on the author's architecture of processor. The paper presents various microarchitectural solutions that can be used to accelerate CNN processing. We explore methods to optimize hardware resources and reduce time required for CNN processing. To achieve high throughput in pipelined computation, different algorithms for convolution calculations in a systolic array are examined. Based on the results of this research, we provide estimates of the characteristics of the neural processor with the proposed microarchitecture.