While the tree-based machine learning (TBML) models exhibit superior performance compared to neural networks on tabular data and hold promise for energy-efficient acceleration using aCAM arrays, their ideal deployment on hardware with explicit exploitation of TBML structure and aCAM circuitry remains a challenging task. In this work, we present MonoSparse-CAM, a new CAM-based optimization technique that exploits TBML sparsity and monotonicity in CAM circuitry to further advance processing performance. Our results indicate that MonoSparse-CAM reduces energy consumption by upto to 28.56x compared to raw processing and by 18.51x compared to state-of-the-art techniques, while improving the efficiency of computation by at least 1.68x.
@article{arxiv.2407.11071,
title = {MonoSparse-CAM: Efficient Tree Model Processing via Monotonicity and Sparsity in CAMs},
author = {Tergel Molom-Ochir and Brady Taylor and Hai Li and Yiran Chen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.11071},
year = {2024}
}