HDTorch: Accelerating Hyperdimensional Computing with GP-GPUs for Design Space Exploration

The HyperDimensional Computing (HDC) Machine Learning (ML) paradigm is highly interesting for applications involving continuous, semi-supervised learning for long-term monitoring. However, its accuracy is not yet on par with other ML approaches, necessitating frameworks enabling fast HDC algorithm design space exploration. To this end, we introduce HDTorch, an open-source, PyTorch-based HDC library with CUDA extensions for hypervector operations. We demonstrate HDTorch's utility by analyzing four HDC benchmark datasets in terms of accuracy, runtime, and memory consumption, utilizing both classical and online HD training methodologies. We demonstrate average (training)/inference speedups of (111x/68x)/87x for classical/online HD, respectively. We also demonstrate how HDTorch enables exploration of HDC strategies applied to large, real-world datasets. We perform the first-ever HD training and inference analysis of the entirety of the CHB-MIT EEG epilepsy database. Results show that the typical approach of training on a subset of the data may not generalize to the entire dataset, an important factor when developing future HD models for medical wearable devices.