Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are capable of learning unprecedentedly effective features from images. Some researchers have struggled to enhance the parameters' efficiency using grouped convolution. However, the relation between the optimal number of convolutional groups and the recognition performance remains an open problem. In this paper, we propose a series of Basic Units (BUs) and a two-level merging strategy to construct deep CNNs, referred to as a joint Grouped Merging Net (GM-Net), which can produce joint grouped and reused deep features while maintaining the feature discriminability for classification tasks. Our GM-Net architectures with the proposed BU_A (dense connection) and BU_B (straight mapping) lead to significant reduction in the number of network parameters and obtain performance improvement in image classification tasks. Extensive experiments are conducted to validate the superior performance of the GM-Net than the state-of-the-arts on the benchmark datasets, e.g., MNIST, CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and SVHN.
Grouped Convolution: Ascribe to the computing limitation, AlexNet @cite_12 has to split its feature maps into two groups, which enlightens scholars nowadays to find high-efficient architectures. Grouped convolution hasn't got much attention until ResNeXt @cite_3 pointed out the significance of cardinality, explained as the number of convolutional groups. By increasing cardinality, ResNeXt @cite_3 increases its accuracy when maintaining model's complexity and parameter numbers. Xception @cite_0 proposed depth-wise separable convolution, or channel-wise convolution, where each channel is deemed as a convolution group. As achieving higher performance, an open question is still left behind: What is the optimal number of convolutional groups?
@cite_0 @cite_3 @cite_12
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In this paper, we present a simple and modularized neural network architecture, named interleaved group convolutional neural networks (IGCNets). The main point lies in a novel building block, a pair of two successive interleaved group convolutions: primary group convolution and secondary group convolution. The two group convolutions are complementary: (i) the convolution on each partition in primary group convolution is a spatial convolution, while on each partition in secondary group convolution, the convolution is a point-wise convolution; (ii) the channels in the same secondary partition come from different primary partitions. We discuss one representative advantage: Wider than a regular convolution with the number of parameters and the computation complexity preserved. We also show that regular convolutions, group convolution with summation fusion, and the Xception block are special cases of interleaved group convolutions. Empirical results over standard benchmarks, CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, SVHN and ImageNet demonstrate that our networks are more efficient in using parameters and computation complexity with similar or higher accuracy. In this paper, we present a simple and modularized neural network architecture, named interleaved group convolutional neural networks (IGCNets). The main point lies in a novel building block, a pair of two successive interleaved group convolutions: primary group convolution and secondary group convolution. The two group convolutions are complementary: (i) the convolution on each partition in primary group convolution is a spatial convolution, while on each partition in secondary group convolution, the convolution is a point-wise convolution; (ii) the channels in the same secondary partition come from different primary partitions. We discuss one representative advantage: Wider than a regular convolution with the number of parameters and the computation complexity preserved. We also show that regular convolutions, group convolution with summation fusion, and the Xception block are special cases of interleaved group convolutions. Empirical results over standard benchmarks, CIFAR- @math , CIFAR- @math , SVHN and ImageNet demonstrate that our networks are more efficient in using parameters and computation complexity with similar or higher accuracy. We present a simple, highly modularized network architecture for image classification. Our network is constructed by repeating a building block that aggregates a set of transformations with the same topology. Our simple design results in a homogeneous, multi-branch architecture that has only a few hyper-parameters to set. This strategy exposes a new dimension, which we call "cardinality" (the size of the set of transformations), as an essential factor in addition to the dimensions of depth and width. On the ImageNet-1K dataset, we empirically show that even under the restricted condition of maintaining complexity, increasing cardinality is able to improve classification accuracy. Moreover, increasing cardinality is more effective than going deeper or wider when we increase the capacity. Our models, named ResNeXt, are the foundations of our entry to the ILSVRC 2016 classification task in which we secured 2nd place. We further investigate ResNeXt on an ImageNet-5K set and the COCO detection set, also showing better results than its ResNet counterpart. The code and models are publicly available online. We present a simple, highly modularized network architecture for image classification. Our network is constructed by repeating a building block that aggregates a set of transformations with the same topology. Our simple design results in a homogeneous, multi-branch architecture that has only a few hyper-parameters to set. This strategy exposes a new dimension, which we call cardinality (the size of the set of transformations), as an essential factor in addition to the dimensions of depth and width. On the ImageNet-1K dataset, we empirically show that even under the restricted condition of maintaining complexity, increasing cardinality is able to improve classification accuracy. Moreover, increasing cardinality is more effective than going deeper or wider when we increase the capacity. Our models, named ResNeXt, are the foundations of our entry to the ILSVRC 2016 classification task in which we secured 2nd place. We further investigate ResNeXt on an ImageNet-5K set and the COCO detection set, also showing better results than its ResNet counterpart. The code and models are publicly available online.