ESRCNN: A framework for optimizing super-resolution tasks on diverse embedded CNN accelerators

CNN-based Super-Resolution (SR), the most representative of low-level vision task, is a promising solution to improve users' QoS on IoT devices that suffer from limited network bandwidth and storage capacity by effectively enhancing image/video resolution. Although prior accelerators to embed CNN show tremendous performance and energy efficiency, they are not suitable for SR tasks regarding off-chip memory accesses. In this work, we present eSRCNN, a framework that enables performing energy-efficient SR tasks on diverse embedded CNN accelerators by decreasing off-chip memory accesses. To reduce off-chip memory accesses, our framework consists of three steps: a network reformation using a cross-layer weight scaling, a precision minimization with priority-based quantization, and an activation map compression exploiting a data locality. As a result, the energy consumption of off-chip memory accesses is reduced up to 71.89% with less than 3.52% area overhead.