用硬件成本精准指导神经网络设计,加速FPGA部署
SNAC-Pack 2.0: Scaled-Out Surrogate Neural Architecture Codesign

- 多目标搜索结合硬件代理模型,避免反复合成耗时
- 在对撞机与量子比特读出任务中,实现性能与资源平衡的最优架构
- 自动化设计将人工调优从数月缩短至数小时,适合硬件敏感场景
神经架构搜索(NAS)常仅优化准确率或依赖与硬件成本相关性差的代理指标(如位操作数)。针对FPGA部署中查找表、乘法器、寄存器、块存储和延迟等多维资源约束,本文提出开源框架SNAC-Pack,支持硬件感知的神经架构联合设计与端到端FPGA部署。该框架采用Optuna与NSGA-II进行多目标全局搜索,通过共享SQLite存储实现跨节点并行;引入硬件代理模型实时预测每轮试错的资源占用与延迟,避免高昂的综合开销。随后通过量化感知训练与迭代幅度剪枝的联合压缩流程进行局部优化,最终使用hls4ml生成FPGA固件。用户可通过YAML配置或可选智能前端在新数据集上运行,无需修改框架。在大型强子对撞机的喷注分类和超导量子比特读出任务中,成功发现紧凑的帕累托最优架构:部分方案在保持基线性能的同时显著降低资源占用,另一些则大幅减少硬件消耗而仅带来小幅性能损失。在量子比特读出案例中,设计空间探索时间由数月手动调优降至数小时自动化搜索。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Neural architecture search (NAS) is a powerful approach for automating model design, but existing methods often optimize for accuracy alone or rely on proxy metrics such as bit operations (BOPs) that correlate poorly with hardware cost. This gap is particularly large for FPGA deployment, where cost is dominated by a multi-dimensional budget of lookup tables, DSPs, flip-flops, BRAM, and latency. We present the Surrogate Neural Architecture Codesign Package (SNAC-Pack), an open-source AutoML framework for hardware-aware neural architecture codesign and end-to-end FPGA deployment. SNAC-Pack runs a multi-objective global search with Optuna and NSGA-II, loading trials to a shared SQLite store that enables parallel workers across compute nodes. A hardware surrogate model outputs per-trial resource and latency estimates, avoiding the synthesis cost that would otherwise dominate the search loop. A local search stage then applies quantization-aware training (QAT) together with iterative magnitude pruning in a combined compression loop, after which the final model is synthesized to FPGA firmware via the hls4ml Python library. A YAML configuration and an optional agentic frontend let users run the pipeline on new datasets without modifying the framework. We demonstrate SNAC-Pack on jet classification at the Large Hadron Collider and superconducting qubit readout, discovering compact Pareto-optimal architectures that either match baseline task performance while reducing FPGA resource utilization or substantially reduce hardware utilization with only modest decreases in task performance. In the qubit readout case, SNAC-Pack also reduces the design space exploration process from months of manual fine-tuning to hours of automated search.
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