Efficient Weight Mapping and Resource Scheduling on Crossbar-based Multi-core CIM Systems

Crossbar-based computing-in-memory (CIM) systems facilitate large-scale parallel multiply-and-accumulate (MAC) operations, while a domain-specific compiler (DSC) plays a pivotal role in optimizing the deployment of neural network algorithms on such systems. With the development of multi-core and large-core architectures, some key compiler problems such as high parallel processing, resource utilization, and crossbar array assignment methods have not been solved. For low-latency application scenarios, we have designed a resource scheduling strategy for our hardware system based on stream data processing to reduce the latency caused by intra-core and intercore communication. Additionally, a weight mapping strategy has been developed to maximize the potential of crossbar arrays in convolutional neural networks (CNNs) deployment. Experimental results on our multi-core eFlash-based CIM system-on-chip (SoC) demonstrate that these two technologies help CNNs achieve a 76% reduction in latency, a 30% improvement in resource utilization, and the use rate of crossbar array that can reach up to 94.7%.