September 27th, 2024

LlamaF: An Efficient Llama2 Architecture Accelerator on Embedded FPGAs

The paper presents an FPGA-based accelerator for large language models, achieving 14.3-15.8 times speedup and 6.1 times power efficiency, enhancing deployment in resource-constrained environments.

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LlamaF: An Efficient Llama2 Architecture Accelerator on Embedded FPGAs

The paper titled "LlamaF: An Efficient Llama2 Architecture Accelerator on Embedded FPGAs" presents a novel FPGA-based accelerator aimed at enhancing the inference performance of large language models (LLMs) on resource-constrained embedded devices. The authors, Han Xu, Yutong Li, and Shihao Ji, address the challenges posed by the high memory and computational requirements of LLMs. Their approach involves post-training quantization to minimize model size and optimize off-chip memory bandwidth. The design incorporates asynchronous computation and a fully pipelined architecture for matrix-vector multiplication. Experimental results using the TinyLlama 1.1B model on a Xilinx ZCU102 platform demonstrate significant improvements, achieving a speedup of 14.3 to 15.8 times and a power efficiency enhancement of 6.1 times compared to running solely on the ZCU102 processing system. This advancement could facilitate the deployment of LLMs in environments with limited resources, making them more accessible for various applications.

- The paper introduces an FPGA-based accelerator for LLMs on embedded devices.

- It utilizes post-training quantization to reduce model size and improve memory bandwidth.

- The design features asynchronous computation and a fully pipelined architecture.

- Experimental results show a speedup of 14.3-15.8x and a power efficiency improvement of 6.1x.

- The advancements aim to make LLMs more deployable in resource-constrained environments.

Link Icon 5 comments
By @fhdsgbbcaA - about 2 months
Looks like LLM inference will follow the same path as Bitcoin: CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC.
By @bitdeep - about 2 months
Not sure if you guys know: Groq already doing this with their ASIC chips. So... the already passed FPGA phase and is on ASICs phase.

The problem is: seems that their costs is 1x or 2x from what they are charging.

By @jsheard - about 2 months
Is there any particular reason you'd want to use an FPGA for this? Unless your problem space is highly dynamic (e.g. prototyping) or you're making products in vanishing low quantities for a price insensitive market (e.g. military) an ASIC is always going to be better.

There doesn't seem to be much flux in the low level architectures used for inferencing at this point, so may as well commit to an ASIC, as is already happening with Apple, Qualcomm, etc building NPUs into their SOCs.

By @KeplerBoy - about 2 months
4 times as efficient as on the SoC's low end arm cores, soo many times less efficient than on modern GPUs I guess?

Not that I was expecting GPU like efficiency from a fairly small scale FPGA project. Nvidia engineers spent thousands of man-years making sure that stuff works well on GPUs.

By @rldjbpin - about 2 months
as of now there are way too many parallel developments across abstraction layers, hardware or software, to really have the best combo just yet. even this example is for an older architecture because certain things just move slower than others.

but when things plateau off, this, then ASICs, would probably be the most efficient way ahead for "stable" versions of AI models during inference.