LV-EmbeDL: Transferring LEGaTO-developed Techniques to Industry

LEGaTO partners Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and Data Intelligence Sweden AB (DIS, through the spin-off of EmbeDL AB) come together to enable the low-energy optimizations for the embedded Deep Learning (DL) applications in the context of LV-EmbeDL project, a Bilateral Technology Transfer Experiment (TTX) granted by Tetramax.

LV-EmbeDL aims to equip the EmbeDL AB’s DL optimizer (EmbeDL), as one of the use-cases of the LEGaTO project, with BSC’s FPGA undervolting techniques developed in the LEGaTO project. 

EmbeDL optimizes DL models to run faster and more energy-efficiently as well as to reduce development and hardware costs. EmbeDL achieved an average of 5X more energy efficiency on the same hardware by exploiting techniques like quantization and pruning. In LV-EmbeDL, through the additional energy efficiency that undervolting delivers, it is expected to reach close to 50X energy-efficiency improvement on the same FPGA hardware, which would be a truly extraordinary achievement.

LV-EmbeDL will be demonstrated in a drone perception system in an operational environment running a DL model developed by EmbeDL AB for pixel-wise semantic segmentation of an RGB camera stream. It will be utilized by industry partner’s customers in domains like autonomous cars, telecom, and IoT.

“I am very pleased that we can now take a practical step to put the FPGA undervolting technology developed in LEGaTO into practice, thanks to Tetramax. We have already shown the significant efficiency of this technology in research papers (for example in MICRO2018 and DSN2020); however, within the LV-EmbeDL project and in collaboration with EmbeDL AB, I am looking forward to taking a big step further and develop it in the industrial environment”, said Behzad Salami (BSC), co-leader of the project together with Hans Salomonsson (EmbeDL AB).

The project also received the I4MS-SAE Label, recognising its excellent implementation, high potential for further deployment and innovative aspect. ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS) & Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE) are initiatives promoted by the European Commission to foster the digital innovation of SMEs in Europe in order to boost their competitiveness.

LV-EmbeDL will start on 1 September 2020 and will run for 6 months.

More on Tetramax:

TETRAMAX is the #1 innovation hub for digitizing European industries in the domain of customized and low-energy computing. Their mission is to boost innovation for SMEs in search of leading-edge digital technologies and solutions. They provide: EU-wide local help desks with individual digitization consulting; Low-risk technology innovation testbeds for SMEs; Cross-border hardware/software ICT supply and demand brokerage; Funding up to 100,000 EUR for tech transfer experiments via open calls.