A Fast and Fuzzy Functional Simulator of Inexact Arithmetic Operators for Approximate Computing Systems

Bonnot, J; Desnos, Karol; Pelcat, Maxime; Ménard, Daniel

doi:10.1145/3194554.3194574

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…To reduce the simulation time of applications implementing inexact operators, a technique to accelerate the simulation of inexact arithmetic operators, "Fast and Fuzzy", is proposed in [25]. The "Fast and Fuzzy" simulator simplifies the approximation error model to fasten the simulation.…”

Section: B Application Quality Metric Determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive simulation-based framework for error characterization of inexact circuits

Bonnot

Camus

Desnos

et al. 2019

Microelectronics Reliability

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To design faster and more energy-efficient systems, numerous inexact arithmetic operators have been proposed, generally obtained by modifying the logic structure of conventional circuits. However, as the quality of service of an application has to be ensured, these operators need to be precisely characterized to be usable in commercial or real-life applications. The characterization of the error induced by inexact operators is commonly achieved with exhaustive or stochastic bit-accurate gate-level simulations. However, for high bit-widths, the time and memory required for such simulations become prohibitive. To overcome these limitations, a new characterization framework for inexact operators is proposed. The proposed framework characterizes the error induced by inexact operators in terms of mean error distance, error rate and maximum error distance, allowing to completely define the error probability mass function. By exploiting statistical properties of the approximation error, the number of simulations needed for precise characterization is minimized. From user-defined confidence requirements, the proposed method computes the minimal number of simulations to obtain the desired accuracy on the characterization for the error rate and mean error distance. The maximum error distance value is then extracted from the simulated samples using the extreme value theory. For 32-bit adders, the proposed method reduces the number of simulations needed up to a few tens of thousands points.

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Section: B Application Quality Metric Determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive simulation-based framework for error characterization of inexact circuits

Bonnot

Camus

Desnos

et al. 2019

Microelectronics Reliability

Self Cite

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“…Approximations in the stereo matching algorithm can also be done implementing approximate operators, as presented in [2]. Approximate operators are implemented slightly modifying the accurate structure of the original operator to save energy.…”

Section: A Approximate Computing Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithm-level approximation for fast (or not) embedded stereovision algorithm

Bonnot

Desnos

Ménard

2018

Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Embedded Computer Systems: Architectures, Modeling, and Simulation

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Because of the growing concern towards the energy consumption of embedded devices, the quality of an application is now considered as a new tunable parameter during the implementation phase. Approximations are then deliberately introduced to gain performance. Nevertheless, when implementing an approximate computing technique, quality deteriorations may appear. In order to check that the application Quality of Service is still met despite the induced approximations, several metrics can be used. The proposed method introduces an algorithmlevel approximate computing method in a stereovision algorithm. The proposed algorithm-level approximation aims at reducing the computational load in a stereo matching algorithm that outputs a depth map from two rectified images. Based on a smart loop perforation technique, this method offers an interesting quality/complexity trade-off. However, when comparing the obtained results to a more basic approximation technique, the results show that the quality/computation time trade-off is strongly dependent on the metric used. Our paper presents the impact of the choice of the quality metric on the results of the proposed approximate computing technique.

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A Fast and Fuzzy Functional Simulator of Inexact Arithmetic Operators for Approximate Computing Systems

Cited by 2 publications

References 21 publications

Adaptive simulation-based framework for error characterization of inexact circuits

Adaptive simulation-based framework for error characterization of inexact circuits

Algorithm-level approximation for fast (or not) embedded stereovision algorithm

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