Benchmarking operation counts against edge-inference energy
This study examines when operation counts cease to be reliable predictors of neural-network inference energy. The completed Raspberry Pi and ESP32-S3 experiments contain 387 accepted trials across 43 models. MAC count tracked broad energy scaling, yet the depthwise models in two closely matched standard/depthwise pairs used 44.8%–88.9% more energy across the two platforms.
Accepted for MIRG ICAIR 2026.