A Latency-Constrained, Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) Implementation in the Versal AI Engine

Abstract: This work explores the use of the AMD Xilinx Versal Adaptable Intelligent Engine(AIE) to accelerate Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) inference for latency-Constrained applications. We present a custom workload distribution framework across the AIE's vector processors and propose a hybrid AIE - Programmable Logic (PL) design to optimize computational efficiency. Our approach highlights the potential of deploying adaptable neural networks in real-time environments such as online preprocessing in the readout chain of a physics experiment, offering a flexible alternative to traditional fixed-function algorithms.