arXiv:2412.16208cs.LGcs.AR2024-12

让有永久故障的神经网络加速器重获新生,不弃用也不绕过坏部件。

Algorithmic Strategies for Sustainable Reuse of Neural Network Accelerators with Permanent Faults

  • 将故障部件行为融入计算,而非绕开或丢弃
  • 在多个数据集上保持接近原始精度的推理表现
  • 仅需现有硬件模块,无需额外改动

硬件故障正成为基于流水线阵列的机器学习加速器日益严峻的挑战。当流水线阵列中出现永久性故障时,现有方法通常为定位并隔离故障处理单元(PE),用冗余PE重执行,或极端情况下整机退役。本文提出新型算法策略,通过整合故障部件的行为来缓解神经网络加速器中的永久性故障,实现更可持续的硬件利用——故障部件不被绕过或废弃,而是赋予第二生命。我们首先构建了基于CUDA的PyTorch流水线阵列模拟器,量化了连接两个PE的链路或权重寄存器中单比特固定为0或1的故障影响(使用float32、float16、bfloat16表示)。随后提出多种针对部分固定故障的算法缓解技术,如激活与权重的可逆缩放或偏移、以及结合故障行为的微调。这些方法无需硬件修改,仅依赖现有广泛使用的流水线阵列加速器中的归一化、激活和存储单元。在全连接与卷积神经网络上,基于MNIST、CIFAR-10和ImageNet的大量实验表明,所提容错方法达到或非常接近原始无故障精度。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Hardware failures are a growing challenge for machine learning accelerators, many of which are based on systolic arrays. When a permanent hardware failure occurs in a systolic array, existing solutions include localizing and isolating the faulty processing element (PE), using a redundant PE for re-execution, or in some extreme cases decommissioning the entire accelerator for further investigation. In this paper, we propose novel algorithmic approaches that mitigate permanent hardware faults in neural network (NN) accelerators by uniquely integrating the behavior of the faulty component instead of bypassing it. In doing so, we aim for a more sustainable use of the accelerator where faulty hardware is neither bypassed nor discarded, instead being given a second life. We first introduce a CUDA-accelerated systolic array simulator in PyTorch, which enabled us to quantify the impact of permanent faults appearing on links connecting two PEs or in weight registers, where one bit is stuck at 0 or 1 in the float32, float16, or bfloat16 representation. We then propose several algorithmic mitigation techniques for a subset of stuck-at faults, such as Invertible Scaling or Shifting of activations and weights, or fine tuning with the faulty behavior. Notably, the proposed techniques do not require any hardware modification, instead relying on existing components of widely used systolic array based accelerators, such as normalization, activation, and storage units. Extensive experimental evaluations using fully connected and convolutional NNs trained on MNIST, CIFAR-10 and ImageNet show that the proposed fault-tolerant approach matches or gets very close to the original fault-free accuracy.

硬件容错神经网络加速器可持续计算

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