The present disclosure provides neural
network computing methods and systems that can reduce hardware cost. A neural
network computing method of one embodiment can include receiving a neural
network model comprising asymmetric operations, each asymmetric operation comprising one or more fixed-point operands that are derived from corresponding floating-point operands through asymmetric quantization; compiling, by a
compiler, a given asymmetric operation of the neural
network model into a symmetric operation comprising a combined offset value, wherein the combined offset value is a constant computed by the
compiler by at least merging zero points of inputs and outputs of the given asymmetric operation; and generating a symmetric neural
network model comprising the symmetric operation for execution in a fixed-point
algorithm by
inference hardware.