Towards Network-accelerated ML-based Distributed Computer Vision Systems

Computer vision is a crucial component in many modern applications (e.g., medical image analysis, environmental monitoring and self-driving cars). However, their stringent computational, latency and bandwidth requirements still pose a huge challenge to system architects, which must seek for alternatives to both the limited resources (e.g., low-end CPU) on client devices and the hurdles of moving data from clients to cloud/edge servers for analysis. In this work, we advocate for the usage of emerging programmable network devices to speed up ML-based computer vision tasks, particularly image classification, on resource constrained environments. To take the first step towards this new paradigm, we propose NetPixel, a framework that enables P4-programmable switches to classify images in realtime, accurately and at scale. We implemented a prototype of NetPixel in a software switch to show its feasibility and conducted a preliminary evaluation on widely adopted datasets. Our results show that NetPixel can classify images with an accuracy within 8% that of a server-based implementation even for shallow classifiers and low-resolution images.