Method and Apparatus for Configuring a Reduced Instruction Set Computer Processor Architecture to Execute a Fully Homomorphic Encryption Algorithm

A method for decompressing compressed neural network weight data on a multiple processor core system, data on a multiple processor core system, wherein the multiple processor core system comprises a chip including a plurality of processor cores, each processor core comprising one or more processing elements an internal cache, and an external memory, wherein the processor cores or their processing elements are operable in a streaming mode, the method comprising:

• retrieving a plurality of groups of the compressed weight data and corresponding bitmasks from a main memory external to a processor chip;
• reconstructing each group of weight values by using the corresponding bitmask for that group to determine locations for zero values thereby eliminating multiplications and excess data movements;
• and
• supplying the reconstructed weight values to one or more neural network layers for processing in a convolution.

A method for compressing neural network weight data on a multiple processor core system, wherein the multiple processor core system comprises a chip including a plurality of processor cores, each processor core comprising one or more processing elements an internal cache, and an external memory, wherein the processor cores or their processing elements are operable in a streaming mode, and wherein the compression is performed automatically upon output from a data reordering module and or a convolution module to reduce bandwidth, power and computation load, the method comprising:

• receiving a set of neural network weight values arranged in a multidimensional W×H×C structure;
• dividing the neural network weight values into a plurality of fixed sized groups;
• generating, for each group, a bitmask indicating whether each weight value in the group is zero or non-zero;
• identifying sparsity patterns including randomly interspersed zeros and short bursts of zero values within the data;
• storing, for each group, only the non-zero values and the associated bitmask as compressed weight data, wherein the compressed weight data is stored in a main memory external to the chip and accessible by the plurality of processor cores, thereby reducing external bandwidth and overall power consumption by avoiding transmission and computation of zero values, whereby decompression allows the data stream to bypass unnecessary multiplications with zero, improving utilization of computation resources;
• retrieving the plurality of groups of the compressed weight data and corresponding bitmasks from a main memory external to a processor chip;
• reconstructing each group of weight values by using the corresponding bitmask for that group to determine locations for zero values thereby eliminating multiplications and excess data movements;
• and
• supplying the reconstructed weight values to one or more neural network layers for processing in a convolution.

A method for compressing neural network weight data on a multiple processor core system, wherein the multiple processor core system comprises a chip including a plurality of processor cores, each with one or more processing elements and internal cache, and wherein the system is operable to stream data, the method comprising:

• receiving a set of weight values;
• for each weight value, appending a bit indicating whether the value is zero or non-zero;
• for one or more sequences of consecutive zero values, appending a multi-bit field indicating a count of the consecutive zeros;
• and
• transmitting the resulting compressed stream over a data bus to an external memory;
• whereby the inclusion of per-value indicators and count fields increases the bit width of the data bus but provides a simpler compression implementation.