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Main Authors: Xue, Xinghua, Liu, Cheng, Wang, Ying, Yang, Bing, Luo, Tao, Zhang, Lei, Li, Huawei, Li, Xiaowei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10468
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author Xue, Xinghua
Liu, Cheng
Wang, Ying
Yang, Bing
Luo, Tao
Zhang, Lei
Li, Huawei
Li, Xiaowei
author_facet Xue, Xinghua
Liu, Cheng
Wang, Ying
Yang, Bing
Luo, Tao
Zhang, Lei
Li, Huawei
Li, Xiaowei
contents Vision Transformers (ViTs) that leverage self-attention mechanism have shown superior performance on many classical vision tasks compared to convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and gain increasing popularity recently. Existing ViTs works mainly optimize performance and accuracy, but ViTs reliability issues induced by soft errors in large-scale VLSI designs have generally been overlooked. In this work, we mainly study the reliability of ViTs and investigate the vulnerability from different architecture granularities ranging from models, layers, modules, and patches for the first time. The investigation reveals that ViTs with the self-attention mechanism are generally more resilient on linear computing including general matrix-matrix multiplication (GEMM) and full connection (FC) and show a relatively even vulnerability distribution across the patches. ViTs involve more fragile non-linear computing such as softmax and GELU compared to typical CNNs. With the above observations, we propose a lightweight block-wise algorithm-based fault tolerance (LB-ABFT) approach to protect the linear computing implemented with distinct sizes of GEMM and apply a range-based protection scheme to mitigate soft errors in non-linear computing. According to our experiments, the proposed fault-tolerant approaches enhance ViTs accuracy significantly with minor computing overhead in presence of various soft errors.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2302_10468
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Soft Error Reliability Analysis of Vision Transformers
Xue, Xinghua
Liu, Cheng
Wang, Ying
Yang, Bing
Luo, Tao
Zhang, Lei
Li, Huawei
Li, Xiaowei
Cryptography and Security
Vision Transformers (ViTs) that leverage self-attention mechanism have shown superior performance on many classical vision tasks compared to convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and gain increasing popularity recently. Existing ViTs works mainly optimize performance and accuracy, but ViTs reliability issues induced by soft errors in large-scale VLSI designs have generally been overlooked. In this work, we mainly study the reliability of ViTs and investigate the vulnerability from different architecture granularities ranging from models, layers, modules, and patches for the first time. The investigation reveals that ViTs with the self-attention mechanism are generally more resilient on linear computing including general matrix-matrix multiplication (GEMM) and full connection (FC) and show a relatively even vulnerability distribution across the patches. ViTs involve more fragile non-linear computing such as softmax and GELU compared to typical CNNs. With the above observations, we propose a lightweight block-wise algorithm-based fault tolerance (LB-ABFT) approach to protect the linear computing implemented with distinct sizes of GEMM and apply a range-based protection scheme to mitigate soft errors in non-linear computing. According to our experiments, the proposed fault-tolerant approaches enhance ViTs accuracy significantly with minor computing overhead in presence of various soft errors.
title Soft Error Reliability Analysis of Vision Transformers
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10468