Pruning CNN based on Combinational Filter Deletion

Network pruning is a figurative model compression technique designed to lighten and accelerate neural network models. Most existing pruning methods prioritize the selection of filters by their importance or apply regularization based on the properties of individual filters, neglecting the internal connections within combinations of multiple filters. This work introduces a pruning method termed Combinational Filter Deletion (CFD), which incorporates a straightforward yet effective evaluation metric based on the diversity of filter combination distributions to reveal the characteristics inherent to multiple filter interactions. CFD enables the exploration of an expanded search space, offering a greater array of choices and leveraging the intrinsic information of conventional layers. Moreover, this method is both general and non-exclusive, capable of enhancing the efficacy of other single-filter-based pruning techniques.