Electronic device, terminal, and operating method with neural network lightweighting

A processor-implemented method comprising:

• generating a plurality of candidate neural networks in which one or more nonlinear layers are excluded from a neural network including a plurality of segments, each of the plurality of segments including a nonlinear layer and a convolution layer;
• selecting one candidate neural network from the plurality of candidate neural networks based on an importance value and a latency value for a succession segment included in each of the plurality of candidate neural networks where convolution layers are successive;
• and
• generating a final neural network in which the successive convolution layers are merged in the selected candidate neural network.

A terminal for communicating with an electronic device that stores a neural network, the terminal comprising:

• a transceiver configured to receive and transmit information to and from the electronic device;
• and
• one or more processors configured to:
• generate a target lightweight neural network corresponding to profile information among a plurality of lightweight neural networks having different degrees of lightweighting a layer in the neural network and different latencies;
• and
• obtain inferential data based on the target lightweight neural network.