Coherent Design of Hybrid Approximate Adders: Unified Design Framework and Metrics

authored by

A. Najafi, M. Weißbrich, G. Payá-Vayá, A. Garcia-Ortiz

Abstract

Numerous approximate adders have been proposed in the literature in response to the languishing benefits of technology scaling. However, they have been obtained with an ad-hoc and non-systematic methodology which does not fully exploit the design space possibilities. This paper provides a conceptual framework for the systematic design of approximate adders, including hybrid and non-equally segmented approaches as well as more robust error metrics. The framework discriminates the scenarios, where approximate processing does not provide significant benefits from those where it does; in this later case, it aids to obtain optimal configurations for the adders. Experimental results with a commercial technology assess the significant improvements of our systematic approach. Furthermore, a case study with a processor enhanced with an approximate accelerator highlights the usability of the methods.

Organisation(s)

Architectures and Systems Section

Type

Article

Journal

IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems

Volume

8

Pages

736-745

No. of pages

10

ISSN

2156-3357

Publication date

12.2018

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1109/jetcas.2018.2833284 (Access: Closed)