LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Approximate Multipliers Using Static Segmentation: Error Analysis and Improvements

Photo by markusspiske from unsplash

Approximate multipliers are used in error-tolerant applications, sacrificing the accuracy of results to minimize power or delay. In this paper we investigate approximate multipliers using static segmentation. In these circuits… Click to show full abstract

Approximate multipliers are used in error-tolerant applications, sacrificing the accuracy of results to minimize power or delay. In this paper we investigate approximate multipliers using static segmentation. In these circuits a set of $m$ contiguous bits (a segment of $m$ bits) is extracted from each of the two $n$ -bits operand, the two segments are in input to a small $m\times m$ internal multiplier whose output is suitably shifted to obtain the result. We investigate both signed and unsigned multipliers, and for the latter we propose a new segmentation approach. We also present simple and effective correction techniques that can significantly reduce the approximation error with reduced hardware costs. We perform a detailed comparison with previously proposed approximate multipliers, considering a hardware implementation in 28 nm technology. The comparison shows that static segmented multipliers with the proposed correction technique have the desirable characteristic of being on (or close to) the Pareto-optimal frontier for both power vs normalized mean error distance and power vs mean relative error distance trade-off plots. These multipliers, therefore, are promising candidates for applications where their error performance is acceptable. This is confirmed by the results obtained for image processing and image classification applications.

Keywords: error; inline formula; approximate multipliers; tex math

Journal Title: IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers
Year Published: 2022

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.