US Patent 11645365 Dynamic multi-mode CNN accelerator and operating methods

A convolutional neural network (CNN) operation accelerator comprising a first sub-accelerator and a second sub-accelerator is provided. The first sub-accelerator comprises I units of CNN processor cores, J units of element-wise & quantize processors, and K units of pool and nonlinear function processor. The second sub-accelerator comprises X units of CNN processor cores, Y units of first element-wise & quantize processors, and Z units of pool and nonlinear function processor. The above variables I˜K, X˜Z are all greater than 0, and at least one of the three relations, namely, “I is different from X”, “J is different from Y”, and “K is different from Z”, is satisfied. A to-be-performed CNN operation comprises a first partial CNN operation and a second partial CNN operation. The first sub-accelerator and the second sub-accelerator perform the first partial CNN operation and the second partial CNN operation, respectively.