Design of Convolutional Neural Network Based on FPGA

Abstract

Recently with the rapid development of artificial intelligence AI, various deep learning algorithms represented by Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have been widely utilized in various fields, showing their unique advantages; especially in Skin Cancer (SC) imaging Neural networks (NN) are methods for performing machine learning (ML) and reside in what's called deep learning (DL). DL refers to the utilization of multiple layers during a neural network to perform the training and classification of data. The Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), a kind of neural network and a prominent machine learning algorithm go through multiple phases before they get implemented in hardware to perform particular tasks for a specific application. State-of-the-art CNNs are computationally intensive, yet their parallel and modular nature make platforms like Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) compatible with the acceleration process. The objective of this paper is to implement a hardware architecture capable of running on an FPGA platform of a convolutional neural network CNN, for that, a study was made by describing the operation of the concerned modules, we detail them then we propose a hardware architecture with RTL scheme for each of these modules using the software ISE (Xilinx). The main objective is to show the efficiency of such a realization compared to a GPU based execution. An experimental study is accomplished for the PH2 database set of benchmark images. The proposed FPGA-based CNN design gives competitive results and shows well its efficiency.