Skip to main content

Overview

Deploy Neurenix models on edge devices including mobile phones, embedded systems, IoT devices, and other resource-constrained environments. This guide covers model optimization techniques and deployment strategies for efficient edge inference.

Model Optimization Techniques

Quantization

Reduce model size and improve inference speed by using lower precision formats.

INT8 Quantization

FP16 Quantization

For GPUs that support half-precision:

Per-Layer Quantization

Apply different quantization levels to different layers:

Model Pruning

Remove unnecessary weights to reduce model size:

Structured Pruning

Prune entire channels or filters:

ONNX Export for Edge Deployment

Convert models to ONNX for deployment on various edge platforms:

Mobile Deployment

iOS (CoreML)

Convert ONNX models to CoreML:

Android (TensorFlow Lite)

Convert to TensorFlow Lite:

Embedded Systems

Raspberry Pi Deployment

NVIDIA Jetson

Leverage GPU acceleration:

WebAssembly Deployment

Deploy models in browsers using WebAssembly:
Use in browser:

Docker for Edge Devices

ARM64 Container

Build for ARM:

Multi-Architecture Build

Optimization CLI

Use the CLI for quick optimization:

Performance Benchmarking

Measure Inference Time

Memory Usage

Complete Edge Deployment Example

Best Practices

  1. Start with Quantization: INT8 quantization typically provides 2-4x speedup with minimal accuracy loss
  2. Use Calibration Data: Provide representative calibration data for better quantization results
  3. Test on Target Device: Always benchmark on the actual deployment hardware
  4. Hybrid Approaches: Combine quantization and pruning for maximum compression
  5. Fine-tune After Optimization: Retrain briefly after quantization/pruning to recover accuracy
  6. Monitor Accuracy: Track accuracy degradation throughout the optimization pipeline
  7. Profile Memory and Compute: Identify bottlenecks before optimization
  8. Consider Model Architecture: Some architectures (e.g., MobileNet) are already optimized for edge

Platform-Specific Guides

  • Raspberry Pi: Use INT8 quantization, limit batch size to 1, enable multi-threading
  • NVIDIA Jetson: Use FP16, leverage TensorRT, enable GPU memory pooling
  • Mobile (iOS/Android): Use platform-specific formats (CoreML/TFLite), optimize for battery life
  • WebAssembly: Use INT8, enable SIMD optimizations, limit model size to less than 50MB
  • IoT Devices: Aggressive pruning (greater than 50%), INT8 quantization, consider model distillation

Troubleshooting

Accuracy Degradation

Memory Issues

Slow Inference

Next Steps