PlayStation: Games & Network Services
Music
Pictures: Movies & TV Shows
Consumer Electronics: Entertainment Technology & Services
Imaging & Sensing Solutions
Financial Services
New Initiatives
Delivering Excitement, Passion, Joy and Compassion to the World.
Pause
Play
Sony's Purpose & Values
News Releases
Corporate Blog
Our Business
Brand
Corporate Report
History
Corporate Data
Affiliated Companies
Sony's PurposeFill the world with emotion,through the power of creativity and technology.
Imaging and Sensing
Sony CSL
Sony AI Inc.
AI Initiatives
Sony Innovation Fund
VISION-S
Human-Centered Design
R&D Center
Technology That Inspires Emotion
Careers
World Map
Employees
Environment
Social Contribution
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Accessibility
Sustainability Report
Sony and Sustainability
Message from the CEO
Response to COVID-19
Creating a world filled with emotion. For the next generation.
Philosophy
Stories
Interviews & Lectures
Gallery
News
Create new values through the power of design.
IR News
IR Library
Earning Announcement
Corporate Bonds & Ratings
Investor Relations
Search
The press releases on this website are provided for historical reference purposes only. Please note that certain information may have changed since the date of release.
November 13, 2018
Reaches Efficiency Milestone for AI Development
Tokyo, Japan - Sony Corporation (hereafter "Sony") today announced that by utilizing its deep learning development framework "Core Library: Neural Network Libraries" in addition to the AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI), a world-class computing infrastructure for AI processing constructed and operated by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), it has achieved the fastest*1 deep learning speeds in the world.
Deep learning is a method of machine learning which uses neural networks modeled after the human brain. By harnessing deep learning, image and sound recognition capabilities have seen rapid growth in recent years, even outperforming humans in certain domains. However, the size of data used in this learning and model parameters used to improve recognition accuracy have been increasing, causing a subsequent rise in calculation times. In some cases, it has taken weeks or even months to conduct a single learning session. Because AI development requires a continuous process of trial-and-error, shortening this learning time is of the utmost importance. To this end, distributed learning using multiple GPUs as a means of shortening learning times is emerging as a popular solution.
When increasing the number of GPUs for distributed learning, there are cases where an increase to batch sizes (the amount of data to be processed at one time) halts the learning process, and other cases where the learning speed actually decreases due to the processing delays caused by data transmission times between GPUs. By utilizing technology that can determine the optimal batch sizes and appropriate number of GPUs based on the current state of the learning process, Sony makes it possible to carry out learning even in large-scale GPU environments such as ABCI, and increased transmission speeds between GPUs through data synchronization technology optimized for ABCI's system structure. These technologies were implemented into the "Neural Network Libraries," and used ABCI computing resources provided by AIST's "ABCI Grand Challenge" to carry out learning. As a result, it was able to complete ImageNet/ResNet-50*2 (the general industry benchmark used to measure distributed learning speeds for deep learning) in approximately 3.7 minutes (when using as many as 2,176 GPUs), achieving the world's fastest speeds to date. The results of this research have been published at "ImageNet/ResNet-50 Training in 224 Seconds (PDF)."
The results of this experiment demonstrate that learning/execution carried out using Neural Network Libraries can achieve world-class speeds, and that by utilizing the same framework, it is possible to conduct technology development using deep learning with a shorter trial-and-error period. Moving forward, Sony will continue development on related technologies and seek to contribute to the development of society using AI technology.