arXiv:2512.06208cs.ARcs.LG2025-12

针对稀疏图像数据,提出FPGA上高效稀疏卷积框架,速度提升73倍。

SparsePixels: Efficient Convolution for Sparse Data on FPGAs

  • 仅计算活跃像素,跳过空值区域,降低计算与存储开销。
  • 在4k像素的稀疏图像上实现73倍加速,延迟降至0.665微秒。
  • 适合对延迟敏感的实时探测系统,如粒子物理实验数据读出。

标准卷积神经网络在FPGA上推理时,因需对所有输入像素进行密集卷积,常导致高延迟和长启动间隔。然而,某些图像数据中语义信息仅占少量像素,多数计算浪费在空白区域。本文提出SparsePixels框架,通过仅保留并计算少数活跃输入像素,忽略其余部分,将每层计算量从$O(HWK^2C_{\text{in}}C_{\text{out}})$降至$O(n^2C_{\text{in}}C_{\text{out}})$,存储量从$O(HWC)$降至$O(nC)$,当$n^2\ll HW$时显著优化。由于计算始终在预设像素预算内运行,推理延迟在运行时恒定且与数据无关。在4k像素的天然稀疏液氩时间投影室(LArTPC)图像中,一个4k参数的紧凑型标准CNN在FPGA上延迟为48.665微秒,而同架构的稀疏CNN仅计算不足1%的像素,实现73倍加速至0.665微秒,资源利用率仍低于片上预算,性能损失仅百分级。该工作旨在支持未来严格要求微秒级延迟的现代实验中的高效数据读出算法开发。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Inference of standard convolutional neural networks (CNNs) on FPGAs often incurs high latency and a long initiation interval due to the deep nested loops required to densely convolve every input pixel regardless of its feature value. However, input features can be spatially sparse in some image data, where semantic information may occupy only a small fraction of the pixels and most computation would be wasted on empty regions. In this work, we introduce SparsePixels, a framework that implements sparse convolution on FPGAs by selectively retaining and computing on a small subset of active input pixels while ignoring the rest, reducing the per-layer compute from $O(HWK^2C_{\text{in}}C_{\text{out}})$ to $O(n^2C_{\text{in}}C_{\text{out}})$ and the storage from $O(HWC)$ to $O(nC)$ when $n^2\ll HW$. Because computation always runs over a single pre-specified pixel budget that is frozen at synthesis, the inference latency is data-independent and constant at runtime. We show that, for identifying neutrino interactions in naturally sparse LArTPC images with 4k pixels, a standard CNN with a compact size of 4k parameters incurs an inference latency of 48.665 $μ$s on an FPGA, whereas a sparse CNN of the same base architecture, computing on less than 1% of the input pixels, achieves a $\times 73$ speedup to 0.665 $μ$s with resource utilization well within on-chip budgets, trading only a small percent-level performance loss. This work aims to benefit future algorithm development for efficient data readout in modern experiments with strict latency requirements of microseconds or below.

FPGA稀疏卷积低延迟图像处理

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