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The article states: >"This makes deep learning applications well-suited for microcontrollers, especially when eight-bit calculations are used instead of float,
by bogomipz 8y ago
The article states:
>"This makes deep learning applications well-suited for microcontrollers, especially when eight-bit calculations are used instead of float, since MCUs often already have DSP-like instructions that are a good fit."
Can someone shed some light on what the author means by "DSP-like instructions"? What are characteristics of DSP instructions? Is there something that makes these unique compared to general purpose CPUs or GPUs?
- jononor 8y agoHere it means SIMD/vectorized operations. Arm Cortex M4F with DSP extensions can do 4 operations on 8 bit data. For traditional signal processing (FIR/IIR filters) dedicated opcode for multiply accumulate is also common, since it is used so much. Saturated add/subtract is another typical 'DSP' kind of feature. EDIT: such opcodes exists on many CPU/GPUs also, but we are talking sub-milliwatt capable devices here.