SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COMPACT AND EFFICIENT SPARSE NEURAL NETWORKS

A device, system, and method is provided for storing a sparse neural network. A plurality of weights of the sparse neural network may be obtained. Each weight may represent a unique connection between a pair of a plurality of artificial neurons in different layers of a plurality of neuron layers. A minority of pairs of neurons in adjacent neuron layers are connected in the sparse neural network. Each of the plurality of weights of the sparse neural network may be stored with an association to a unique index. The unique index may uniquely identify a pair of artificial neurons that have a connection represented by the weight. Only non-zero weights may be stored that represent connections between pairs of neurons (and zero weights may not be stored that represent no connections between pairs of neurons).