Differentiable branching in deep networks for fast inference
In this paper, we consider the design of deep neural networks augmented with multiple auxiliary classifiers departing from the main (backbone) network. These classifiers can be used to perform early-exit from the network at various layers, making them convenient for energy-constrained applications such as IoT, embedded devices, or Fog computing. However, designing an optimized early-exit strategy is a difficult task, generally requiring a large amount of manual fine-tuning.