TY - JOUR AB - Approximate circuits trade-off computational accuracy against improvements in hardware area, delay, or energy consumption. IP core vendors who wish to create such circuits need to convince consumers of the resulting approximation quality. As a solution we propose proof-carrying approximate circuits: The vendor creates an approximate IP core together with a certificate that proves the approximation quality. The proof certificate is bundled with the approximate IP core and sent off to the consumer. The consumer can formally verify the approximation quality of the IP core at a fraction of the typical computational cost for formal verification. In this paper, we first make the case for proof-carrying approximate circuits and then demonstrate the feasibility of the approach by a set of synthesis experiments using an exemplary approximation framework. AU - Witschen, Linus Matthias AU - Wiersema, Tobias AU - Platzner, Marco ID - 17358 IS - 9 JF - IEEE Transactions On Very Large Scale Integration Systems KW - Approximate circuit synthesis KW - approximate computing KW - error metrics KW - formal verification KW - proof-carrying hardware SN - 1063-8210 TI - Proof-carrying Approximate Circuits VL - 28 ER - TY - CONF AB - The increasing availability and deployment of open source software in personal and commercial environments makes open source software highly appealing for hackers, and others who are interested in exploiting software vulnerabilities. This deployment has resulted in a debate ?full of religion? on the security of open source software compared to that of closed source software. However, beyond such arguments, only little quantitative analysis on this research issue has taken place. We discuss the state-of-the-art of the security debate and identify shortcomings. Based on these, we propose new metrics, which allows to answer the question to what extent the review process of open source and closed source development has helped to fix vulnerabilities. We illustrate the application of some of these metrics in a case study on OpenOffice (open source software) vs. Microsoft Office (closed source software). AU - Schryen, Guido AU - Kadura, Rouven ID - 5625 KW - Open source software KW - Closed source software KW - Security KW - Metrics T2 - 24th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing TI - Open Source vs. Closed Source Software: Towards Measuring Security ER -