Ye Qiao

Ye Qiao, Mohammed Alnemari, Nader Bagherzadeh

This paper proposes a novel two-stage framework for emotion recognition using EEG data that outperforms state-of-the-art models while keeping the model size small and computationally efficient. The framework consists of two stages; the first stage involves constructing efficient models named EEGNet, which is inspired by the state-of-the-art efficient architecture and employs inverted-residual blocks that contain depthwise separable convolutional layers. The EEGNet models on both valence and arousal labels achieve the average classification accuracy of 90%, 96.6%, and 99.5% with only 6.4k, 14k, and 25k parameters, respectively. In terms of accuracy and storage cost, these models outperform the previous state-of-the-art result by up to 9%. In the second stage, we binarize these models to further compress them and deploy them easily on edge devices. Binary Neural Networks (BNNs) typically degrade model accuracy. We improve the EEGNet binarized models in this paper by introducing three novel methods and achieving a 20\% improvement over the baseline binary models. The proposed binarized EEGNet models achieve accuracies of 81%, 95%, and 99% with storage costs of 0.11Mbits, 0.28Mbits, and 0.46Mbits, respectively. Those models help deploy a precise human emotion recognition system on the edge environment.

Ye Qiao, Haocheng Xu, Yifan Zhang et al.

Neural Architecture Search (NAS) has proven effective in discovering new Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures, particularly for scenarios with well-defined accuracy optimization goals. However, previous approaches often involve time-consuming training on super networks or intensive architecture sampling and evaluations. Although various zero-cost proxies correlated with CNN model accuracy have been proposed for efficient architecture search without training, their lack of hardware consideration makes it challenging to target highly resource-constrained edge devices such as microcontroller units (MCUs). To address these challenges, we introduce MONAS, a novel hardware-aware zero-shot NAS framework specifically designed for MCUs in edge computing. MONAS incorporates hardware optimality considerations into the search process through our proposed MCU hardware latency estimation model. By combining this with specialized performance indicators (proxies), MONAS identifies optimal neural architectures without incurring heavy training and evaluation costs, optimizing for both hardware latency and accuracy under resource constraints. MONAS achieves up to a 1104x improvement in search efficiency over previous work targeting MCUs and can discover CNN models with over 3.23x faster inference on MCUs while maintaining similar accuracy compared to more general NAS approaches.

Ye Qiao, Yian Wang, Zhiheng Chen et al.

Compressing large language models (LLMs) for deployment on commodity GPUs remains challenging: conventional scalar quantization is limited to fixed bit-widths (e.g., 8/4/3-bit), offers only a few discrete compression points, and typically requires calibration data. We present FASQ (Flexible Accelerated Subspace Quantization), a calibration-free framework that applies product quantization to LLM weight matrices. By tuning two parameters, sub-vector size and codebook cardinality, FASQ exposes a continuous design space spanning 27-49% of the original FP16 model size, filling compression gaps that fixed-bit schemes cannot reach. On Meta-Llama-3-8B, FASQ surpasses 4-bit GPTQ and AWQ in accuracy (67.1-67.7 avg.) at 37-42% model size, with consistent results on Qwen3-8B and Qwen3.5-9B-Base. To make product quantization practical at inference time, we design custom CUDA kernels: a LUT-free direct-compute GEMV for decode and an output-stationary double-buffered LUT GEMM for prefill, both with split-K parallelism. On an RTX~3090, FASQ achieves 45.2 tok/s decode at effective 4-bit (2.56x memory reduction) and 51.8 tok/s at effective 3-bit (2.80x), both surpassing FP16 tensor-core performance (43.9 tok/s) and delivering 1.6 to 1.8x the throughput of AWQ, 2.5 to 2.5x of GPTQ, and 4.3 to 5x of RTN. FASQ is the only compressed method that accelerates decode beyond FP16, offering calibration-free compression, continuous size-quality trade-offs, and real-time inference on a single consumer GPU.

Ye Qiao, Zhiheng Chen, Yifan Zhang et al.

Deploying large language models (LLMs) on edge platforms is challenged by their high computational and memory demands. Although recent low-bit quantization methods (e.g., BitNet, DeepSeek) compress weights to as little as 1.58 bits with minimal accuracy loss, edge deployment is still constrained by limited on-chip resources, power budgets, and the often-neglected latency of the prefill phase. We present TeLLMe, the first ternary LLM accelerator for low-power FPGAs (e.g., AMD KV260) that fully supports both prefill and autoregressive decoding using 1.58-bit weights and 8-bit activations. Our contributions include: (1) a table-lookup matrix engine for ternary matmul that merges grouped activations with online precomputation to minimize resource use; (2) a fused, bandwidth-efficient attention module featuring a reversed reordering scheme to accelerate prefill; and (3) a tightly integrated normalization and quantization--dequantization unit optimized for ultra-low-bit inference. Under a 7W power budget, TeLLMe delivers up to 9 tokens/s throughput over 1,024-token contexts and prefill latencies of 0.55--1.15 s for 64--128 token prompts, marking a significant energy-efficiency advance and establishing a new edge FPGA benchmark for generative AI.

Ye Qiao, Haocheng Xu, Yifan Zhang et al.

Neural Architecture Search (NAS) effectively discovers new Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures, particularly for accuracy optimization. However, prior approaches often require resource-intensive training on super networks or extensive architecture evaluations, limiting practical applications. To address these challenges, we propose MicroNAS, a hardware-aware zero-shot NAS framework designed for microcontroller units (MCUs) in edge computing. MicroNAS considers target hardware optimality during the search, utilizing specialized performance indicators to identify optimal neural architectures without high computational costs. Compared to previous works, MicroNAS achieves up to 1104x improvement in search efficiency and discovers models with over 3.23x faster MCU inference while maintaining similar accuracy

Ye Qiao, Zhiheng Chen, Yian Wang et al.

Transformer-based models have demonstrated superior performance in various fields, including natural language processing and computer vision. However, their enormous model size and high demands in computation, memory, and communication limit their deployment to edge platforms for local, secure inference. Binary transformers offer a compact, low-complexity solution for edge deployment with reduced bandwidth needs and acceptable accuracy. However, existing binary transformers perform inefficiently on current hardware due to the lack of binary specific optimizations. To address this, we introduce COBRA, an algorithm-architecture co-optimized binary Transformer accelerator for edge computing. COBRA features a real 1-bit binary multiplication unit, enabling matrix operations with -1, 0, and +1 values, surpassing ternary methods. With further hardware-friendly optimizations in the attention block, COBRA achieves up to 3,894.7 GOPS throughput and 448.7 GOPS/Watt energy efficiency on edge FPGAs, delivering a 311x energy efficiency improvement over GPUs and a 3.5x throughput improvement over the state-of-the-art binary accelerator, with only negligible inference accuracy degradation.

Ye Qiao, Jingcheng Li, Haocheng Xu et al.

Neural Architecture Search (NAS) is a powerful technique for discovering high-performing CNN architectures, but most existing methods rely on costly training or extensive sampling. Zero-shot NAS offers a training-free alternative by using proxies to predict architecture performance. However, existing proxies are often suboptimal -- frequently outperformed by simple metrics like parameter count or FLOPs -- and they generalize poorly across different search spaces. Moreover, current model-based proxies struggle to adapt to new operators without access to ground-truth accuracy, limiting their transferability. We propose TG-NAS, a universal, model-based zero-cost (ZC) proxy that combines a Transformer-based operator embedding generator with a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) to predict architecture performance. Unlike prior model-based predictors, TG-NAS requires no retraining and generalizes across arbitrary search spaces. It serves as a standalone ZC proxy with strong data efficiency, robustness, and cross-space consistency. Extensive evaluations across diverse NAS benchmarks demonstrate TG-NAS's superior rank correlation and generalizability compared to existing proxies. Additionally, it improves search efficiency by up to 300x and discovers architectures achieving 93.75% CIFAR-10 accuracy on NAS-Bench-201 and 74.9% ImageNet top-1 accuracy on the DARTS space, establishing TG-NAS as a promising foundation for efficient, generalizable NAS.

Ye Qiao, Zhiheng Chen, Yifan Zhang et al.

With the emergence of wearable devices and other embedded systems, deploying large language models (LLMs) on edge platforms has become an urgent need. However, this is challenging because of their high computational and memory demands. Although recent low-bit quantization methods (e.g., BitNet, DeepSeek) compress weights to as low as 1.58~bits with minimal accuracy loss, edge deployment is still constrained by limited on-chip resources, power budgets, and the often-neglected long latency of the prefill stage. We present \textbf{TeLLMe}, the first table-lookup-based ternary LLM accelerator for low-power edge FPGAs that fully supports both prefill and autoregressive decoding using 1.58-bit weights and 8-bit activations. TeLLMe incorporates several novel techniques, including (1) a table-lookup-based ternary matrix multiplication (TLMM) engine utilizing grouped activations and online precomputation for low resource utilization and high throughput; (2) a fine-grained analytic URAM-based weight buffer management scheme for efficient loading and compute engine access; (3) a streaming dataflow architecture that fuses floating-point element-wise operations with linear computations to hide latency; (4) a reversed-reordered prefill stage attention with fused attention operations for high memory efficiency; and (5) a resource-efficient specialized decoding stage attention. Under a 5~W power budget, TeLLMe delivers up to 25~tokens/s decoding throughput and 0.45--0.96~s time-to-first-token (TTFT) for 64--128 token prompts, marking a significant energy-efficiency advancement in LLM inference on edge FPGAs.

Ye Qiao, Haocheng Xu, Xiaofan Zhang et al.

Extending the context window support of large language models (LLMs) is crucial for tasks with long-distance dependencies. RoPE-based interpolation and extrapolation methods, such as linear scaling and frequency-aware schemes, enable longer input length support without retraining, while post-training quantization (PTQ) makes deployment practical. However, we show that combining RoPE position interpolation (PI) with PTQ degrades accuracy due to coupled effects including long-context aliasing, dynamic-range dilation, anisotropy from axis-aligned quantizers vs. rotated RoPE pairs, and outlier shifting that produces position-dependent logit noise. We provide, to the best of our knowledge, the first systematic analysis of the PI+PTQ approach and introduce two practical diagnostics: interpolation pressure (per-band sensitivity to phase scaling) and tail-inflation ratios (outlier shift from short to long contexts). Following the analysis results, we propose Q-ROAR (Quantization, RoPE-interpolation, and Outlier Aware Rescaling), a weight-only, interpolation-aware stabilization of PI for quantized LLMs. Q-ROAR groups RoPE dimensions into a small number of frequency bands and performs a lightweight search over per-band scales for Key and Query weights (with an optional symmetric variant to preserve logit scale). The search is guided by our diagnostics and uses a tiny long-context development dataset, requiring no fine-tuning to the model, no architecture or kernel changes, and no additional deployment overhead. Empirically, Q-ROAR reduces the model's perplexity on long-context workloads by more than 14%, while preserving short-context performance, inference throughput, and compatibility with existing LLM system stacks.

Ye Qiao, Sitao Huang

Extending LLM context windows is crucial for long range tasks. RoPE-based position interpolation (PI) methods like linear and frequency-aware scaling extend input lengths without retraining, while post-training quantization (PTQ) enables practical deployment. We show that combining PI with PTQ degrades accuracy due to coupled effects long context aliasing, dynamic range dilation, axis grid anisotropy, and outlier shifting that induce position-dependent logit noise. We provide the first systematic analysis of PI plus PTQ and introduce two diagnostics: Interpolation Pressure (per-band phase scaling sensitivity) and Tail Inflation Ratios (outlier shift from short to long contexts). To address this, we propose Q-ROAR, a RoPE-aware, weight-only stabilization that groups RoPE dimensions into a few frequency bands and performs a small search over per-band scales for W_Q,W_K, with an optional symmetric variant to preserve logit scale. The diagnostics guided search uses a tiny long-context dev set and requires no fine-tuning, kernel, or architecture changes. Empirically, Q-ROAR recovers up to 0.7% accuracy on standard tasks and reduces GovReport perplexity by more than 10%, while preserving short-context performance and compatibility with existing inference stacks.

Jingcheng Li, Ye Qiao, Haocheng Xu et al.

Images captured under low-light scenarios often suffer from low quality. Previous CNN-based deep learning methods often involve using Retinex theory. Nevertheless, most of them cannot perform well in more complicated datasets like LOL-v2 while consuming too much computational resources. Besides, some of these methods require sophisticated training at different stages, making the procedure even more time-consuming and tedious. In this paper, we propose a more accurate, concise, and one-stage Retinex theory based framework, RSEND. RSEND first divides the low-light image into the illumination map and reflectance map, then captures the important details in the illumination map and performs light enhancement. After this step, it refines the enhanced gray-scale image and does element-wise matrix multiplication with the reflectance map. By denoising the output it has from the previous step, it obtains the final result. In all the steps, RSEND utilizes Squeeze and Excitation network to better capture the details. Comprehensive quantitative and qualitative experiments show that our Efficient Retinex model significantly outperforms other CNN-based models, achieving a PSNR improvement ranging from 0.44 dB to 4.2 dB in different datasets and even outperforms transformer-based models in the LOL-v2-real dataset.

Harsimrat Kaeley, Ye Qiao, Nader Bagherzadeh

Stock trend analysis has been an influential time-series prediction topic due to its lucrative and inherently chaotic nature. Many models looking to accurately predict the trend of stocks have been based on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). However, due to the limitations of RNNs, such as gradient vanish and long-term dependencies being lost as sequence length increases, in this paper we develop a Transformer based model that uses technical stock data and sentiment analysis to conduct accurate stock trend prediction over long time windows. This paper also introduces a novel dataset containing daily technical stock data and top news headline data spanning almost three years. Stock prediction based solely on technical data can suffer from lag caused by the inability of stock indicators to effectively factor in breaking market news. The use of sentiment analysis on top headlines can help account for unforeseen shifts in market conditions caused by news coverage. We measure the performance of our model against RNNs over sequence lengths spanning 5 business days to 30 business days to mimic different length trading strategies. This reveals an improvement in directional accuracy over RNNs as sequence length is increased, with the largest improvement being close to 18.63% at 30 business days.