TinyWolf — Efficient on-device TinyML training for IoT using enhanced Grey Wolf Optimization

Training a deep learning model generally requires a huge amount of memory and processing power. Once trained, the learned model can make predictions very fast with very little resource consumption. The learned weights can be fitted into a microcontroller to build affordable embedded intelligence systems which is also known as TinyML. Although few attempts have been made, the limits of the state-of-the-art training of a deep learning model within a microcontroller can be pushed further. Generally deep learning models are trained with gradient optimizers which predict with high accuracy but require a very high amount of resources. On the other hand, nature-inspired meta-heuristic optimizers can be used to build a fast approximation of the model’s optimal solution with low resources. After a rigorous test, we have found that Grey Wolf Optimizer can be modified for enhanced uses of main memory, paging and swap space among $\alpha ,\beta ,\delta$ and $\omega$ wolves. This modification saved up to 71% memory requirements compared to gradient optimizers. We have used this modification to train the TinyML model within a microcontroller of 256KB RAM. The performances of the proposed framework have been meticulously benchmarked on 13 open-sourced datasets.