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Poster
Post training 4-bit quantization of convolutional networks for rapid-deployment
Ron Banner · Yury Nahshan · Daniel Soudry

Wed Dec 11 10:45 AM -- 12:45 PM (PST) @ East Exhibition Hall B + C #105
in Deep Learning -- Efficient Inference Methods »

Convolutional neural networks require significant memory bandwidth and storage for intermediate computations, apart from substantial computing resources. Neural network quantization has significant benefits in reducing the amount of intermediate results, but it often requires the full datasets and time-consuming fine tuning to recover the accuracy lost after quantization. This paper introduces the first practical 4-bit post training quantization approach: it does not involve training the quantized model (fine-tuning), nor it requires the availability of the full dataset. We target the quantization of both activations and weights and suggest three complementary methods for minimizing quantization error at the tensor level, two of whom obtain a closed-form analytical solution. Combining these methods, our approach achieves accuracy that is just a few percents less the state-of-the-art baseline across a wide range of convolutional models. The source code to replicate all experiments is available on GitHub: \url{https://github.com/submission2019/cnn-quantization}.

Keywords: Efficient Inference Methods · Deep Learning
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Author Information

Ron Banner (Intel - Artificial Intelligence Products Group (AIPG))
Yury Nahshan (Intel - Artificial Intelligence Products Group (AIPG))
Daniel Soudry (Technion)

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Technion, working in the areas of Machine learning and theoretical neuroscience. I am especially interested in all aspects of neural networks and deep learning. I did my post-doc (as a Gruss Lipper fellow) working with Prof. Liam Paninski in the Department of Statistics, the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience the Grossman Center for Statistics of the Mind, the Kavli Institute for Brain Science, and the NeuroTechnology Center at Columbia University. I did my Ph.D. (2008-2013, direct track) in the Network Biology Research Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Technion, Israel Institute of technology, under the guidance of Prof. Ron Meir. In 2008 I graduated summa cum laude with a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and a B.Sc. in Physics, after studying in the Technion since 2004.

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