The invention discloses a
convolution neural network (CNN) hardware accelerator and an acceleration method. The accelerator comprises an input buffer and a plurality of operation units , and is characterized in that the input buffer is used for caching input feature picture data, the plurality of operation units respectively share the input feature picture data to perform a CNN
convolution operation, each operation unit comprises a
convolution kernel buffer, an output buffer and a multiplier-
adder unit formed by a plurality of MAC components, the convolution kernel buffer receives convolutionkernel data returned from an
external storage component, the convolution kernel data is provided for each MAC component of the multiplier-
adder unit, each MAC component receives the input feature picture data and the convolution kernel data to perform a multiply accumulation operation, and an intermediate result of the operation is written into the output buffer. The acceleration method is a method applying the accelerator. The CNN hardware accelerator and the acceleration method can improve the CNN
hardware acceleration performance, and have the advantages of high
data reuse rate and efficiency, small amount of
data migration, good expansibility, small bandwidth required by the
system, small hardware overhead and the like.