Hierarchical Fault Simulation of Deep Neural Networks on Multi-Core Systems

In this paper, a hierarchical fault simulation technique for neural networks is proposed, supporting both permanent and temporary faults. In the proposed technique, different levels of hierarchy are used, forming a mixed-level simulation environment. In such an environment, the pre-synthesis behavioral specification of the network and the post-synthesis gate-level model are co-simulated. To accelerate the fault simulation process, faults are injected in the gate-level specification of the selected neurons while the behavioral model in different levels of abstraction is used to simulate the remaining neurons. Further speedup is obtained through event-driven simulation and parallelization. Experimental results confirm the time efficiency of the proposed fault simulation technique.