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Main Authors: Baradaran, Fereshteh, Raji, Mohsen, Baradaran, Azadeh, Baradaran, Arezoo, Akbarifard, Reihaneh
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03816
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author Baradaran, Fereshteh
Raji, Mohsen
Baradaran, Azadeh
Baradaran, Arezoo
Akbarifard, Reihaneh
author_facet Baradaran, Fereshteh
Raji, Mohsen
Baradaran, Azadeh
Baradaran, Arezoo
Akbarifard, Reihaneh
contents Vision Transformers (ViTs) have demonstrated superior performance over Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in various vision-related tasks such as classification, object detection, and segmentation due to their use of self-attention mechanisms. As ViTs become more popular in safety-critical applications like autonomous driving, ensuring their correct functionality becomes essential, especially in the presence of bit-flip faults in their parameters stored in memory. In this paper, a fault tolerance technique is introduced to protect ViT parameters against bit-flip faults with zero memory overhead. Since the least significant bits of parameters are not critical for model accuracy, replacing the LSB with a parity bit provides an error detection mechanism without imposing any overhead on the model. When faults are detected, affected parameters are masked by zeroing out, as most parameters in ViT models are near zero, effectively preventing accuracy degradation. This approach enhances reliability across ViT models, improving the robustness of parameters to bit-flips by up to three orders of magnitude, making it an effective zero-overhead solution for fault tolerance in critical applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_03816
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Zero Memory Overhead Approach for Protecting Vision Transformer Parameters
Baradaran, Fereshteh
Raji, Mohsen
Baradaran, Azadeh
Baradaran, Arezoo
Akbarifard, Reihaneh
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Vision Transformers (ViTs) have demonstrated superior performance over Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in various vision-related tasks such as classification, object detection, and segmentation due to their use of self-attention mechanisms. As ViTs become more popular in safety-critical applications like autonomous driving, ensuring their correct functionality becomes essential, especially in the presence of bit-flip faults in their parameters stored in memory. In this paper, a fault tolerance technique is introduced to protect ViT parameters against bit-flip faults with zero memory overhead. Since the least significant bits of parameters are not critical for model accuracy, replacing the LSB with a parity bit provides an error detection mechanism without imposing any overhead on the model. When faults are detected, affected parameters are masked by zeroing out, as most parameters in ViT models are near zero, effectively preventing accuracy degradation. This approach enhances reliability across ViT models, improving the robustness of parameters to bit-flips by up to three orders of magnitude, making it an effective zero-overhead solution for fault tolerance in critical applications.
title Zero Memory Overhead Approach for Protecting Vision Transformer Parameters
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03816