Capuchin: A Neural Network Model Generator for 16-bit Microcontrollers

About This

This repository stores Capuchin, a Neural Network model generator for implementing pre-trained models on TI MSP430FR5994 microcontrollers.

This project is made into two parts: a Python interface encoder.py and the microcontroller C implementation capuchin-MCU. The Python interface is built with a function that takes tensorflow.keras.Model objects as the argument to extract uDNN model configuration and generates a compiled header file neural_network_parameters.h that can be used to compile along with the microcontroller C implementation. The microcontroller C implementation extracts the model configuration array in the header file neural_network_parameters.h, builds a uDNN model on MSP430FR5994 by calling a sequence of uDNN layer implemetations, and feeds the sample dataset input into the uDNN model to compute the inference output.

Getting Started

Dependencies

Disclaim: the following dependencies are only author's recommended setup. This project was tested under the following dependencies and verified as correct. This project may work under other versions of dependencies but the correctness may not be guaranteed.

• tensorflow=2.8.*
• keras=2.8.*
• fxpmath=0.4.8
• numpy=1.25.2
• TI Code Composer Studio (recommended to debug, since this project only simulates input and output rather than connecting to actual sensors)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/lezhangleonard/Capuchin.git

git clone https://github.com/leleonardzhang/Capuchin.git (obsolete repo & account)

Executing the Program

Using Python Interface

1. Copy encoder.py into the same directory of your Python uDNN implementation program.

   cp Capuchin/encoder.py {UDNN_PYTHON_IMPL_DIR}

2. Import encoder package into your Python uDNN implementation program.

   import encoder

3. Call encoder.export_model(MODEL_OBJECT) in your program where the argumentMODEL_OBJECT should be a trained tensorflow.keras.Model object.

4. Now a header file named neural_network_parameters.h should be written in the same directory.

Using C Implementation

1. Copy the header file neural_network_parameters.h into directory Capuchin/capuchin-MCU.

   cp {UDNN_PYTHON_IMPL_DIR}/neural_network_parameters.h {CAPUCHIN_PROJECT_DIR}/Capuchin/capuchin-MCU

2. Open {CAPUCHIN_PROJECT_DIR}/Capuchin/capuchin-MCU as a TI CCS project.

3. Copy desired input into input_buffer array in /neural_network_parameters.h.

4. Compile and Run the inference on MSP430.

Supports

Python Interface

For the reason that tensorflow is a complex framework for deep learning, the functionality of automation implementation on MSP430 is not comprehensive. Only frequent-used layers and functions in DNNs and CNNs are now supported. The following implementations are supported and verified as correct:

Tensorflow Models

• Sequential

Tensorflow Layers (Parameters)

• Dense (activation)
• Conv2d (filters, channels, activation, strides, padding='valid' | 'same')
• Maxpooling2d (pool_size)
• Flatten
• Dropout
• LeakyReLU

Tensorflow Activation Functions

• linear
• ReLU
• LeakyReLU
• tanh
• sigmoid

C Implementation

Due to the hardware constraints of MSP430, the C implementation should meet the following known requirements:

• LENGTH_OF_INPUT + NUMBER_OF_PARAMETERS_IN_MODEL <= 68K (FRAM persistent memory constraint)
• LEA_RAM_SIZE <= 1.8K (LEA SRAM volatile memory constraint)
• LENGTH_OF_ANY_LAYER_OUTPUT <= 16384 (FRAM persistent memory constraint)

Examples

(To be updated)

Contact

Le (Leonard) Zhang - Email: le-zhang at ucsd.edu

Project Link: https://github.com/lezhangleonard/Capuchin

Acknowledgement

This project is built on the top of budget-RNN.

T. Kannan and H. Hoffmann, "Budget RNNs: Multi-Capacity Neural Networks to Improve In-Sensor Inference Under Energy Budgets," 2021 IEEE 27th Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), 2021, pp. 143-156, doi: 10.1109/RTAS52030.2021.00020.

Cite Our Paper

@inproceedings{zhang2022demo,
  title={Demo Abstract: Capuchin: A Neural Network Model Generator for 16-bit Microcontrollers},
  author={Zhang, Le and Luo, Yubo and Nirjon, Shahriar},
  booktitle={2022 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN)},
  pages={497--498},
  year={2022},
  organization={IEEE}
}