# An Adaptive Device-Edge Co-Inference Framework Based on Soft Actor-Critic

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.02968 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.02968/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 18 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Deep Compression: Compressing Deep Neural Networks with Pruning, Trained Quantization and Huffman Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.00149/) (2015)
- [BranchyNet: Fast Inference via Early Exiting from Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01686/) (2017)
- [Soft Actor-Critic for Discrete Action Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07207/) (2019)
- [Edge Intelligence: On-Demand Deep Learning Model Co-Inference with Device-Edge Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07840/) (2018)
- [JALAD: Joint Accuracy- and Latency-Aware Deep Structure Decoupling for Edge-Cloud Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.10027/) (2018)
- [Edge-Host Partitioning of Deep Neural Networks with Feature Space Encoding for Resource-Constrained Internet-of-Things Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03835/) (2018)
- [Joint Communication, Computation, Caching, and Control in Big Data Multi-access Edge Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11512/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, the applications of deep neural network (DNN) have been very prominent in many fields such as computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP) due to its superior feature extraction performance. However, the high-dimension parameter model and large-scale mathematical calculation restrict the execution efficiency, especially for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Different from the previous cloud/edge-only pattern that brings huge pressure for uplink communication and device-only fashion that undertakes unaffordable calculation strength, we highlight the collaborative computation between the device and edge for DNN models, which can achieve a good balance between the communication load and execution accuracy. Specifically, a systematic on-demand co-inference framework is proposed to exploit the multi-branch structure, in which the pre-trained Alexnet is right-sized through early-exit and partitioned at an intermediate DNN layer. The integer quantization is enforced to further compress transmission bits. As a result, we establish a new Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) optimizer-Soft Actor Critic for discrete (SAC-d), which generates the exit point, partition point, and compressing bits by soft policy iterations. Based on the latency and accuracy aware reward design, such an optimizer can well adapt to the complex environment like dynamic wireless channel and arbitrary CPU processing, and is capable of supporting the 5G URLLC. Real-world experiment on Raspberry Pi 4 and PC shows the outperformance of the proposed solution.