TVFS: Topology Voltage Frequency Scaling for Reliable Embedded ConvNets

Abstract

This brief introduces Topology Voltage Frequency Scaling (TVFS), a performance management technique for embedded Convolutional Neural Networks (ConvNets) deployed on low-power CPUs. Using TVFS, pre-trained ConvNets can be efficiently processed over a continuous stream of data, enabling reliable and predictable multi-inference tasks under latency constraints. Experimental results, collected from an image classification task built with MobileNet-v1 and ported into an ARM Cortex-A15 core, reveal TVFS holds fast and continuous inference (from few runs, up to 2000), ensuring a limited accuracy loss (from 0.9% to 3.1%), and better thermal profiles (average temperature 16.4 °C below the on-chip critical threshold).