NVIDIA Corporation
TECHNIQUES FOR REMOVING MASKS FROM PRUNED NEURAL NETWORKS

Abstract:

A demasking engine removes masks from a pruned neural network that is represented by a graph of nodes. The demasking engine analyzes a tensor and a mask associated with a given node in the graph of nodes to determine portions of the tensor that are zeroed by the mask. The demasking engine then removes these portions from the tensor to generate a densified tensor that has a smaller dimensionality than the original tensor. A function associated with the node can be evaluated more quickly based on the densified tensor than the original tensor. The demasking engine adds a scatter operation subsequent to the node in order to scale the dimensionality of the densified tensor to the dimensionality associated with the original tensor.