A Hierarchical Dispatcher for Scheduling Multiple Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) on Edge Devices

This paper presents a hierarchical dispatcher architecture designed to efficiently schedule the execution of multiple deep neural networks (DNNs) on edge devices with heterogeneous processing units (PUs). The proposed architecture is applicable to systems where PUs are either integrated on a single edge device or distributed across multiple devices. We separate the dispatcher and scheduling policy. The dispatcher in our framework acts as a mechanism for allocating, executing, and managing subgraphs of DNNs across various PUs, and the scheduling policy generates optimized scheduling sequences. We formalize a hierarchical structure consisting of high-level and low-level dispatchers, which together provide scalable and flexible scheduling support for diverse DNN workloads. The high-level dispatcher oversees the partitioning and distribution of subgraphs, while the low-level dispatcher handles the execution and coordination of subgraphs on allocated PUs. This separation of responsibilities allows the architecture to efficiently manage workloads in both homogeneous and heterogeneous environments. Through case studies on edge devices, we demonstrate the practicality of the proposed architecture. By integrating appropriate scheduling policies, our approach achieves an average performance improvement of 51.6%, providing a scalable and adaptable solution for deploying deep learning models on heterogeneous edge systems.