Patent ID: 11941533
Assignee: PERCEIVE CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A method for generating neural network program instructions for configuring a neural network inference integrated circuit (NNIC) to execute a neural network, the method comprising:
receiving a specification of the neural network comprising a plurality of layers, wherein each layer of a set of the layers comprises a set of filters that each comprises a plurality of filter-channels, each of the filter-channels comprising a set of weight values that are applied to input values of the layer to generate output values for the layer, the output values of each layer of the set of layers arranged as a set of output-value-channels;
based on the received neural network specification, identifying a set of filter-channels of a particular layer of the neural network, each filter-channel in the set of filter-channels comprising only zero weight values;
when the identified set of filter-channels comprises all of the filter-channels of a particular filter that is used to generate a particular output-value-channel of the particular layer, modifying the specification of the neural network by (i) removing the particular filter, (ii) removing the particular output-value-channel such that the particular output-value-channel is not propagated to subsequent layers, and (iii) removing filter-channels, corresponding to the particular output-value channel, of each of the filters of a subsequent layer that uses the output-value-channels of the particular layer; and
generating a set of program instructions for the NNIC to use to execute the modified neural network.