B it SAD v2

Abstract

Computer vision and machine learning algorithms operating under a strict power budget require an alternate computing paradigm. While bitstream computing (BC) satisfies these constraints, creating BC systems is difficult. To address the design challenges, we propose compiler extensions to B it SAD, a DSL for BC. Our work enables bit-level software emulation and automated generation of hierarchical hardware, discusses potential optimizations, and proposes compiler phases to implement those optimizations in a hardware-aware manner. Finally, we introduce population coding, a parallelization scheme for stochastic computing that decreases latency without sacrificing accuracy, and provide theoretical and experimental guarantees on its effectiveness.