Focus: A Streaming Concentration Architecture for Efficient Vision-Language Models
Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have demonstrated strong performance on tasks such as video captioning and visual question answering. However, their growing scale and video-level inputs lead to significant computational and memory overhead, posing challenges for real-time deployment on hardware accelerators. While prior work attempts to reduce redundancy via token pruning or merging, these methods typically operate at coarse granularity and incur high runtime overhead due to global token-level operations. In this study, we propose Focus, a Streaming Concentration Architecture that efficiently accelerates VLM inference through progressive, fine-grained redundancy elimination. Focus introduces a multilevel concentration paradigm that hierarchically compresses vision-language inputs at three levels: (1) semantic-guided token pruning based on textual prompts, (2) spatial-temporal block-level concentration using localized comparisons, and (3) vector-level redundancy removal via motion-aware matching. All concentration steps are tightly co-designed with the architecture to support streaming-friendly, on-chip execution. Focus leverages GEMM tiling, convolution-style layout, and cross-modal attention to minimize off-chip access while enabling high throughput. Implemented as a modular unit within a systolic-array accelerator, Focus achieves 2.4× speedup and 3.3× reduction in energy, significantly outperforming state-of-the-art accelerators in both performance and energy efficiency. The full-stack implementation of Focus is open-sourced at: https://github.com/dubcyfor3/Focus.
Mon 2 FebDisplayed time zone: Hobart change
09:50 - 11:10 | |||
09:50 20mTalk | Focus: A Streaming Concentration Architecture for Efficient Vision-Language Models Main Conference Chiyue Wei Duke University, Cong Guo Duke University, Junyao Zhang Duke University, Haoxuan Shan Duke University, Yifan Xu Duke University, Ziyue Zhang Duke University, Yudong Liu Duke University, Qinsi Wang Duke University, Changchun Zhou Duke University, Hai "Helen" Li Duke University, Yiran Chen Duke University | ||
10:10 20mTalk | LoCaLUT: Harnessing Capacity–Computation Tradeoffs for LUT-Based Inference in DRAM-PIM Main Conference Junguk Hong Seoul National University, Changmin Shin Seoul National University, Sukjin Kim Seoul National University, Si Ung Noh Seoul National University, Taehee Kwon Seoul National University, Seongyeon Park Seoul National University, Hanjun Kim Yonsei University, Youngsok Kim Yonsei University, Jinho Lee Seoul National University | ||
10:30 20mTalk | RPU - A Reasoning Processing Unit Main Conference Matthew Adiletta Harvard University, David Brooks Harvard University, Gu-Yeon Wei Harvard University | ||
10:50 20mTalk | PinDrop: Breaking the Silence on SDCs in a Large-Scale Fleet Main Conference Peter W. Deutsch Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Meta, Harish D. Dixit Meta, Gautham Vunnam Meta, Carl Moran Meta, Eleanor Ozer Meta, Sriram Sankar Meta | ||