Open-source FPGA-ML codesign for the MLPerf Tiny Benchmark

Abstract

We present our development experience and recent results for the MLPerf Tiny Inference Benchmark on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platforms. We use the open-source hls4ml and FINN workflows, which aim to democratize AI-hardware codesign of optimized neural networks on FPGAs. We present the design and implementation process for the keyword spotting, anomaly detection, and image classification benchmark tasks. The resulting hardware implementations are quantized, configurable, spatial dataflow architectures tailored for speed and efficiency and introduce new generic optimizations and common workflows developed as a part of this work. The full workflow is presented from quantization-aware training to FPGA implementation. The solutions are deployed on system-on-chip (Pynq-Z2) and pure FPGA (Arty A7-100T) platforms. The resulting submissions achieve latencies as low as 20 $\mu$s and energy consumption as low as 30 $\mu$J per inference. We demonstrate how emerging ML benchmarks on heterogeneous hardware platforms can catalyze collaboration and the development of new techniques and more accessible tools.