2.0LGAug 23, 2023
Fast Exact NPN Classification with Influence-aided Canonical FormYonghe Zhang, Liwei Ni, Jiaxi Zhang et al. · pku
NPN classification has many applications in the synthesis and verification of digital circuits. The canonical-form-based method is the most common approach, designing a canonical form as representative for the NPN equivalence class first and then computing the transformation function according to the canonical form. Most works use variable symmetries and several signatures, mainly based on the cofactor, to simplify the canonical form construction and computation. This paper describes a novel canonical form and its computation algorithm by introducing Boolean influence to NPN classification, which is a basic concept in analysis of Boolean functions. We show that influence is input-negation-independent, input-permutation-dependent, and has other structural information than previous signatures for NPN classification. Therefore, it is a significant ingredient in speeding up NPN classification. Experimental results prove that influence plays an important role in reducing the transformation enumeration in computing the canonical form. Compared with the state-of-the-art algorithm implemented in ABC, our influence-aided canonical form for exact NPN classification gains up to 5.5x speedup.
12.6DCJun 2
UltraEP: Unleash MoE Training and Inference on Rack-Scale Nodes with Near-Optimal Load BalancingXinming Wei, Chao Jin, Tuo Dai et al.
Large-scale expert parallelism (EP) is becoming pivotal for training and serving frontier MoE models, but it also amplifies device-level expert load imbalance into compute stragglers, token all-to-all bottlenecks, and activation-memory spikes. Existing balancers redistribute experts periodically based on historical load, which becomes unreliable for production deployments with non-stationary load patterns. We present UltraEP, the first exact-load, real-time balancer for large-EP MoE training and serving prefill on rack-scale nodes (RSNs). Built upon the extended scale-up connectivity of RSNs, UltraEP rebalances every microbatch and layer on critical paths, which requires nontrivial co-design of plan solving and expert replication communication to minimize exposed overhead. To this end, UltraEP eagerly reacts to post-gating load with efficient quota-driven planning, and executes the resulting irregular expert-state transfers with RSN-native persistent tile streaming and relay-based fan-out mitigation. Averaged across MoE models from 106B to 671B parameters in training and prefill, UltraEP achieves 94.3% of the force-balanced ideal throughput, delivering 1.49$\times$ improvement over non-balancing, while reducing the final inter-rank imbalance from 1.30$-$4.01 to 1.01$-$1.04. Additionally, we validate UltraEP's scalability and robustness in production MoE training with 2560 GPUs.
17.8CVMay 13
Pyramid Forcing: Head-Aware Pyramid KV Cache Policy for High-Quality Long Video GenerationJiayu Chen, Junbei Tang, Wenbiao Zhao et al.
Autoregressive video generation enables streaming and open-ended long video synthesis, but still suffers from long-term degradation caused by accumulated errors. Existing KVCache strategies usually apply unified historical-frame retention, implicitly assuming homogeneous historical dependencies across attention heads. We revisit historical-frame attention and reveal three distinct head types: Anchor Heads require broad long-range context, Wave Heads exhibit periodic temporal dependencies, and Veil Heads focus on initial and adjacent frames. Based on this finding, we propose Pyramid Forcing, a head-aware pyramidal KVCache framework that identifies head types offline, assigns behavior-specific cache policies, and supports heterogeneous cache lengths via efficient ragged-cache attention. Experiments on Self Forcing and Causal Forcing show that Pyramid Forcing consistently improves long-horizon generation quality on VBench-Long, increasing the 60-second Self Forcing score from 77.87 to 81.21 while enhancing motion dynamics, visual fidelity, and semantic consistency. Project: https://if-lab-pku.github.io/Pyramid-Forcing/.
EcoVideo: Entropy-Orchestrated Video Generation Paradigm in Cloud-Edge DynamicsJiayu Chen, Hengyi Zhang, Maoliang Li et al.
DiT video generation is latency-intensive due to iterative full-frame denoising, while prior cloud-edge methods largely rely on static inter-step decoupling and cannot leverage inter-frame similarity or adapt to system dynamics. We propose EcoVideo, an entropy-orchestrated framework for dynamic inter-frame decoupling: early-stage self-attention entropy provides a training-free estimate of frame-wise information density for frame selection; a cloud large model denoises sparse high-entropy keyframes; and an edge lightweight model reconstructs the remaining frames via motion-aware interpolation with refinement for temporal stability. EcoVideo further adapts the keyframe budget and edge refinement depth to real-time bandwidth and compute availability, optimizing end-to-end latency under constraints. Experiments on representative DiT video generators show improved quality--efficiency trade-offs and up to 2.9x end-to-end speedup in low-bandwidth, compute-limited edge settings. Code is available at https://github.com/IF-LAB-PKU/EcoVideo.
8.5AINov 14, 2024
OpenLS-DGF: An Adaptive Open-Source Dataset Generation Framework for Machine Learning Tasks in Logic SynthesisLiwei Ni, Rui Wang, Miao Liu et al.
This paper introduces OpenLS-DGF, an adaptive logic synthesis dataset generation framework, to enhance machine learning~(ML) applications within the logic synthesis process. Previous dataset generation flows were tailored for specific tasks or lacked integrated machine learning capabilities. While OpenLS-DGF supports various machine learning tasks by encapsulating the three fundamental steps of logic synthesis: Boolean representation, logic optimization, and technology mapping. It preserves the original information in both Verilog and machine-learning-friendly GraphML formats. The verilog files offer semi-customizable capabilities, enabling researchers to insert additional steps and incrementally refine the generated dataset. Furthermore, OpenLS-DGF includes an adaptive circuit engine that facilitates the final dataset management and downstream tasks. The generated OpenLS-D-v1 dataset comprises 46 combinational designs from established benchmarks, totaling over 966,000 Boolean circuits. OpenLS-D-v1 supports integrating new data features, making it more versatile for new challenges. This paper demonstrates the versatility of OpenLS-D-v1 through four distinct downstream tasks: circuit classification, circuit ranking, quality of results (QoR) prediction, and probability prediction. Each task is chosen to represent essential steps of logic synthesis, and the experimental results show the generated dataset from OpenLS-DGF achieves prominent diversity and applicability. The source code and datasets are available at https://github.com/Logic-Factory/ACE/blob/master/OpenLS-DGF/readme.md.
4.1LGNov 12, 2025
DynamicRTL: RTL Representation Learning for Dynamic Circuit BehaviorRuiyang Ma, Yunhao Zhou, Yipeng Wang et al.
There is a growing body of work on using Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to learn representations of circuits, focusing primarily on their static characteristics. However, these models fail to capture circuit runtime behavior, which is crucial for tasks like circuit verification and optimization. To address this limitation, we introduce DR-GNN (DynamicRTL-GNN), a novel approach that learns RTL circuit representations by incorporating both static structures and multi-cycle execution behaviors. DR-GNN leverages an operator-level Control Data Flow Graph (CDFG) to represent Register Transfer Level (RTL) circuits, enabling the model to capture dynamic dependencies and runtime execution. To train and evaluate DR-GNN, we build the first comprehensive dynamic circuit dataset, comprising over 6,300 Verilog designs and 63,000 simulation traces. Our results demonstrate that DR-GNN outperforms existing models in branch hit prediction and toggle rate prediction. Furthermore, its learned representations transfer effectively to related dynamic circuit tasks, achieving strong performance in power estimation and assertion prediction.
2.8CVFeb 26
ToProVAR: Efficient Visual Autoregressive Modeling via Tri-Dimensional Entropy-Aware Semantic Analysis and Sparsity OptimizationJiayu Chen, Ruoyu Lin, Zihao Zheng et al.
Visual Autoregressive(VAR) models enhance generation quality but face a critical efficiency bottleneck in later stages. In this paper, we present a novel optimization framework for VAR models that fundamentally differs from prior approaches such as FastVAR and SkipVAR. Instead of relying on heuristic skipping strategies, our method leverages attention entropy to characterize the semantic projections across different dimensions of the model architecture. This enables precise identification of parameter dynamics under varying token granularity levels, semantic scopes, and generation scales. Building on this analysis, we further uncover sparsity patterns along three critical dimensions-token, layer, and scale-and propose a set of fine-grained optimization strategies tailored to these patterns. Extensive evaluation demonstrates that our approach achieves aggressive acceleration of the generation process while significantly preserving semantic fidelity and fine details, outperforming traditional methods in both efficiency and quality. Experiments on Infinity-2B and Infinity-8B models demonstrate that ToProVAR achieves up to 3.4x acceleration with minimal quality loss, effectively mitigating the issues found in prior work. Our code will be made publicly available.
7.3DCJun 30, 2025
Agent.xpu: Efficient Scheduling of Agentic LLM Workloads on Heterogeneous SoCXinming Wei, Jiahao Zhang, Haoran Li et al.
The proliferation of agentic Large Language Models (LLMs) on personal devices introduces a new class of workloads characterized by a dichotomy of objectives. Reactive tasks, initiated by users, demand immediate, low-latency responses, while proactive tasks operate invisibly and prioritize throughput. Existing on-device LLM engines, designed for isolated inferences, fail to efficiently manage these concurrent and conflicting requests on consumer-grade heterogeneous SoCs with CPU, integrated GPU, and NPU. This paper introduces Agent.xpu, an efficient serving system for agentic LLM workloads on memory-unified heterogeneous SoCs. With dedicated offline profiling, Agent.xpu first constructs a heterogeneous execution graph, which fuses and chunks model kernels for affinity-guided, elastic accelerator mapping with predictive kernel annotation. At runtime, its online scheduler enables fine-grained, kernel-level preemption to guarantee the responsiveness of reactive tasks. To maximize SoC utilization, it adopts slack-aware kernel backfill to opportunistically append proactive tasks, and mitigates NPU-iGPU contention via bandwidth-aware dispatch. Evaluation on an Intel Core Ultra SoC shows that Agent.xpu achieves 4.6$\times$ lower latency for reactive tasks and sustains 1.6$\times$-6.8$\times$ higher throughput for proactive tasks compared to state-of-the-art inference engines.
15.4SEJun 3, 2024
VerilogReader: LLM-Aided Hardware Test GenerationRuiyang Ma, Yuxin Yang, Ziqian Liu et al.
Test generation has been a critical and labor-intensive process in hardware design verification. Recently, the emergence of Large Language Model (LLM) with their advanced understanding and inference capabilities, has introduced a novel approach. In this work, we investigate the integration of LLM into the Coverage Directed Test Generation (CDG) process, where the LLM functions as a Verilog Reader. It accurately grasps the code logic, thereby generating stimuli that can reach unexplored code branches. We compare our framework with random testing, using our self-designed Verilog benchmark suite. Experiments demonstrate that our framework outperforms random testing on designs within the LLM's comprehension scope. Our work also proposes prompt engineering optimizations to augment LLM's understanding scope and accuracy.
2.3CCNov 11, 2021
Enhanced Fast Boolean Matching based on Sensitivity Signatures PruningJiaxi Zhang, Liwei Ni, Shenggen Zheng et al.
Boolean matching is significant to digital integrated circuits design. An exhaustive method for Boolean matching is computationally expensive even for functions with only a few variables, because the time complexity of such an algorithm for an n-variable Boolean function is $O(2^{n+1}n!)$. Sensitivity is an important characteristic and a measure of the complexity of Boolean functions. It has been used in analysis of the complexity of algorithms in different fields. This measure could be regarded as a signature of Boolean functions and has great potential to help reduce the search space of Boolean matching. In this paper, we introduce Boolean sensitivity into Boolean matching and design several sensitivity-related signatures to enhance fast Boolean matching. First, we propose some new signatures that relate sensitivity to Boolean equivalence. Then, we prove that these signatures are prerequisites for Boolean matching, which we can use to reduce the search space of the matching problem. Besides, we develop a fast sensitivity calculation method to compute and compare these signatures of two Boolean functions. Compared with the traditional cofactor and symmetric detection methods, sensitivity is a series of signatures of another dimension. We also show that sensitivity can be easily integrated into traditional methods and distinguish the mismatched Boolean functions faster. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that introduces sensitivity to Boolean matching. The experimental results show that sensitivity-related signatures we proposed in this paper can reduce the search space to a very large extent, and perform up to 3x speedup over the state-of-the-art Boolean matching methods.