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Integer Transformer Accelerator

The Integer Transformer Accelerator is a hardware accelerator for the Multi-Head Attention (MHA) operation in the Transformer model. It targets efficient inference on embedded systems by exploiting 8-bit quantization and an innovative softmax implementation that operates exclusively on integer values. By computing on-the-fly in streaming mode, our softmax implementation minimizes data movement and energy consumption. ITA achieves competitive energy efficiency with respect to state-of-the-art transformer accelerators with 16.9 TOPS/W, while outperforming them in area efficiency with 5.93 TOPS/mm2 in 22 nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator technology at 0.8 V.

This repository contains the RTL code and test generator for the ITA.

Structure

The repository is structured as follows:

  • modelsim contains Makefiles and scripts to run the simulation in ModelSim.
  • PyITA contains the test generator for the ITA.
  • src contains the RTL code.
    • tb contains the testbenches for the ITA modules.

RTL Simulation

We use Bender to generate our simulation scripts. Make sure you have Bender installed, or install it in the ITA repository with:

$> make bender

To run the RTL simulation, execute the following command:

$> make sim
$> s=64 e=128 p=192 make sim # To use different dimensions
$> target=sim_ita_hwpe_tb make sim # To run ITA with HWPE wrapper

Test Vector Generation

The test generator creates ONNX graphs and in case of MHA (Multi-Head Attention), additional test vectors for RTL simulations. The relevant files for ITA are located in the PyITA directory.

Tests

In tests directory, several tests are available to verify the correctness of the ITA. To run the example test, execute the following command:

$> ./tests/run.sh

To run a series of tests, execute the following command:

$> ./tests/run_loop.sh

Test granularity and stalling can be set with the following commands before running the script:

$> export granularity=64
$> export no_stalls=1

Requirements

To install the required Python packages, create a virtual environment. Make sure to first deactivate any existing virtual environment or conda/mamba environment. Then, create a new virtual environment and install the required packages:

$> python -m venv venv
$> source venv/bin/activate
$> pip install -r requirements.txt

If you want to enable pre-commit hooks, which perform code formatting and linting, run the following command:

$> pre-commit install

In case you want to compare the softmax implementation with the QuantLib implementation, you need to install the QuantLib library and additional dependencies. To do so, create a virtual environment:

$> pip install torch torchvision scipy pandas

and install QuantLib from GitHub.

$> git clone git@github.com:pulp-platform/quantlib.git

ITA Multi-Head Attention

To get an overview of possible options run:

$> python testGenerator.py -h

To generate a ONNX graph and test vectors for RTL simulations for a MHA operation run:

$> python testGenerator.py -H 1 -S 64 -E 128 -P 192

To visualize the ONNX graph after generation, run:

$> netron simvectors/data_S64_E128_P192_H1_B1/network.onnx

Contributors

License

This repository makes use of two licenses:

  • for all software: Apache License Version 2.0
  • for all hardware: Solderpad Hardware License Version 0.51

For further information have a look at the license files: LICENSE.hw, LICENSE.sw

References

ITA: An Energy-Efficient Attention and Softmax Accelerator for Quantized Transformers 

@INPROCEEDINGS{10244348,
  author={Islamoglu, Gamze and Scherer, Moritz and Paulin, Gianna and Fischer, Tim and Jung, Victor J.B. and Garofalo, Angelo and Benini, Luca},
  booktitle={2023 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED)},
  title={ITA: An Energy-Efficient Attention and Softmax Accelerator for Quantized Transformers},
  year={2023},
  volume={},
  number={},
  pages={1-6},
  keywords={Quantization (signal);Embedded systems;Power demand;Computational modeling;Silicon-on-insulator;Parallel processing;Transformers;neural network accelerators;transformers;attention;softmax},
  doi={10.1109/ISLPED58423.2023.10244348}}

This paper was published on IEEE Xplore and is also available on arXiv:2307.03493 [cs.AR].