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In the IoT and smart systems era, the massive amount of data generated from various IoT and smart devices are often sent directly to the cloud infrastructure for processing, analyzing, and storing. While handling this big data, conventional cloud infrastructure encounters many challenges, e.g., scarce bandwidth, high latency, real-time constraints, high power, and privacy issues. The edge-centric computing is transpiring as a synergistic solution to address these issues of cloud computing, by enabling processing/analyzing the data closer to the source of the data or at the network’s edge. This in turn allows real-time and in-situ data analytics and processing, which is imperative for many real-world IoT and smart systems, such as smart cars. Since the edge computing is still in its infancy, innovative solutions, models, and techniques are needed to support real-time and in-situ data processing and analysis of edge computing platforms. In this research work, we introduce a novel, unique, and efficient FPGA-HLS-based hardware accelerator for PCA+SVM model for real-time processing and analysis on edge computing platforms. This is inspired by our previous work on PCA+SVM models for edge computing applications. It was demonstrated that the amalgamation of principal component analysis (PCA) and support vector machines (SVM) leads to high classification accuracy in many fields. Also, machine learning techniques, such as SVM, can be utilized for many edge tasks, e.g. anomaly detection, health monitoring, etc.; and dimensionality reduction techniques, such as PCA, are often used to reduce the data size, which in turn vital for memory-constrained edge devices/platforms. Furthermore, our previous works demonstrated that FPGA’s many traits, including parallel processing abilities, low latency, and stable throughput despite the workload, make FPGAs suitable for real-time processing of edge computing applications/platforms. Our proposed FPGA-HLS-based PCA+SVM hardware IP achieves up to 254x speedup compared to its embedded software counterpart, while maintaining small area and low power requirements of edge computing applications. Our experimental results show great potential in utilizing FPGA-based architectures to support real-time processing on edge computing applications.
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Low latency optical-based mode tracking with machine learning deployed on FPGAs on a tokamak
Active feedback control in magnetic confinement fusion devices is desirable to mitigate plasma instabilities and enable robust operation. Optical high-speed cameras provide a powerful, non-invasive diagnostic and can be suitable for these applications. In this study, we process high-speed camera data, at rates exceeding 100 kfps, on in situ field-programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware to track magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) mode evolution and generate control signals in real time. Our system utilizes a convolutional neural network (CNN) model, which predicts the n = 1 MHD mode amplitude and phase using camera images with better accuracy than other tested non-deep-learning-based methods. By implementing this model directly within the standard FPGA readout hardware of the high-speed camera diagnostic, our mode tracking system achieves a total trigger-to-output latency of 17.6 μs and a throughput of up to 120 kfps. This study at the High Beta Tokamak-Extended Pulse (HBT-EP) experiment demonstrates an FPGA-based high-speed camera data acquisition and processing system, enabling application in real-time machine-learning-based tokamak diagnostic and control as well as potential applications in other scientific domains.
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- PAR ID:
- 10532678
- Publisher / Repository:
- Review of Scientific Instruments
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Review of Scientific Instruments
- Volume:
- 95
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 0034-6748
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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