finn VS intel-extension-for-pytorch

FINN - https://github.com/Xilinx/finn

Seems fine to use on other FPGAs, there are some clauses you need to abide by. https://github.com/Xilinx/finn/blob/main/LICENSE.txt

It really depends on the type of data you are using. There may (or may not) be some trade offs and sacrifices. There are frameworks which can basically translate your neural network information from a high level python code into equivalent HLS code which is optimized for low latency when inferred on FPGAs. Some frameworks which might be useful for you to explore are hls4ml and finn. These are some frameworks which can achieve low latency inference of neural networks on FPGAs using Xilinx Vitis HLS. These are what I found when I did a similar experiment but with much lower latency target (a few hundred ns) and a very simple MLP with 1D signal as input which was a year ago. Not sure if there are better alternatives available as of 2023. But conceptually all these work on the primary principle of having a supporting framework/methodology to first quantize the network and limit the precision of data to fixed point. The HLS then produced will also be a result of the framework applying dataflow techniques such that the resulting HLS code will produce an RTL which has the best overall latency.

OK I found it. Looks like they use SYCL (which for some reason they've rebranded to DPC++): https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-pytorch/tree/v2...

Just to point out it does, kind of: https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-pytorch

I've asked before if they'll merge it back into PyTorch main and include it in the CI, not sure if they've done that yet.

Intel already has a working GPGPU stack, using oneAPI/SYCL.

They also have arguably pretty good OpenCL support, as well as downstream support for PyTorch and Tensorflow using their custom extensions https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-tensorflow and https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-pytorch which are actively developed and just recently brought up-to-date with upstream releases.

https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-pytorch :

> Intel® Extension for PyTorch extends PyTorch* with up-to-date features optimizations for an extra performance boost on Intel hardware. Optimizations take advantage of AVX-512 Vector Neural Network Instructions (AVX512 VNNI) and Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel® AMX) on Intel CPUs as well as Intel Xe Matrix Extensions (XMX) AI engines on Intel discrete GPUs. Moreover, through PyTorch* xpu device, Intel® Extension for PyTorch* provides easy GPU acceleration for Intel discrete GPUs with PyTorch*

https://pytorch.org/blog/celebrate-pytorch-2.0/ :

> As part of the PyTorch 2.0 compilation stack, TorchInductor CPU backend optimization brings notable performance improvements via graph compilation over the PyTorch eager mode.

The TorchInductor CPU backend is sped up by leveraging the technologies from the Intel® Extension for PyTorch for Conv/GEMM ops with post-op fusion and weight prepacking, and PyTorch ATen CPU kernels for memory-bound ops with explicit vectorization on top of OpenMP-based thread parallelization*

DLRS Deep Learning Reference Stack: https://intel.github.io/stacks/dlrs/index.html

Install intel extensions for pytorch using docker. https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-pytorch

There is: https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-pytorch for intel cards on GPUs, but I would assume this doesn't extend to integraded graphics

Nonetheless, this issue might be relevant for your case.

I'm not sure where the disdain for ROCm is coming from, but tensorflow-rocm and the rocm pytorch container were fairly easy to setup and use from scratch once I got the correct Linux kernel installed along with the rest of the necessary ROCm components needed to use tensorflow and pytorch for rocm. TBF Intel Extension for Tensorflow wasn't too bad to setup either (except for the lack of float16 mixed precision training support, that was definitely a pain point to not be able to have), but Intel Extension for Pytorch for Intel GPUs (a.k.a. IPEX-GPU) however, has been a PITA to use for my i5 11400H iGPU NOT because the iGPU itself is slow, BUT because the current i915 driver in the mainline linux kernel simply doesn't work with IPEX-GPU (every script that I've ran ends up freezing when using even the i915 drivers as recent as Kernel version 6), and when I ended up installing drivers that were meant for the Arc GPUs that finally got IPEX-GPUs to work, I ended up with even more issues such as sh*tty FP64 emulation support that basically meant I had to do some really janky workarounds for things to not break while FP64 emulation was enabled (disabling was simply not an option for me, long story short). And yea unlike Intel, both Nvidia AND AMD actually do support FP64 instructions AND FLOAT16 mixed precision training natively on their GPUs so that one doesn't have to worry about running into "unsupported FP64 instructions" and "unsupported training modes" no matter what software they're running on those GPUs.