Multiply-accumulate “0” data gating

An electronic device, comprising:

• a processor having a plurality of execution units comprising at least a first type of execution unit having a first set of execution resources and a second type of execution unit having a second set of execution resources, different from the first set of execution resources;
• and
• processing circuitry to:
• receive a first inference weight and a second inference weight from a layer of a convolutional neural network into at least one of a multiply unit or an accumulate unit;
• and
• bypass the at least one of a multiply unit or an accumulate unit, such that the at least one of multiply unit or an accumulate unit performs no operations on the first inference weight or the second inference weight, in response to at least one of the first inference weight or the second inference weigh having a value zero.