Automatic Generation of LUTs for Hardware Neural Networks

Abstract

A common solution for activation function design in HNN is the LUT representation that has acceptable area constraints and usually achieves acceptable execution time. Tools and techniques for automatic generation of LUTs have been developed but have some problems as high complexity, high dependency of external tools or languages and the optimization techniques that are not efficient enough for critical applications. In order to solve some of the presented problems this paper describes a method for automatic LUT generation that overcomes some deficiencies of existing methods using a simple approach. This method was evaluated considering two different robotic systems that hereafter will be implemented in hardware and whose networks have a different behaviour using different domains of the same activation function. Proposed method achieved good results that are directly related to how networks define the activation function domain.