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Abstract

Deep neural network (DNN) accelerators received considerable attention in
past years due to saved energy compared to mainstream hardware. Low-voltage
operation of DNN accelerators allows to further reduce energy consumption
significantly, however, causes bit-level failures in the memory storing the
quantized DNN weights. In this paper, we show that a combination of robust
fixed-point quantization, weight clipping, and random bit error training
(RandBET) improves robustness against random bit errors in (quantized) DNN
weights significantly. This leads to high energy savings from both low-voltage
operation as well as low-precision quantization. Our approach generalizes
across operating voltages and accelerators, as demonstrated on bit errors from
profiled SRAM arrays. We also discuss why weight clipping alone is already a
quite effective way to achieve robustness against bit errors. Moreover, we
specifically discuss the involved trade-offs regarding accuracy, robustness and
precision: Without losing more than 1% in accuracy compared to a normally
trained 8-bit DNN, we can reduce energy consumption on CIFAR-10 by 20%. Higher
energy savings of, e.g., 30%, are possible at the cost of 2.5% accuracy, even
for 4-bit DNNs.