A Hybrid Synthesis Methodology for Approximate Circuits

M. Awais, H. Ghasemzadeh Mohammadi, M. Platzner, in: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020, ACM, 2020, pp. 421–426.

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Conference Paper | Published | English
Abstract
Automated synthesis of approximate circuits via functional approximations is of prominent importance to provide efficiency in energy, runtime, and chip area required to execute an application. Approximate circuits are usually obtained either through analytical approximation methods leveraging approximate transformations such as bit-width scaling or via iterative search-based optimization methods when a library of approximate components, e.g., approximate adders and multipliers, is available. For the latter, exploring the extremely large design space is challenging in terms of both computations and quality of results. While the combination of both methods can create more room for further approximations, the \textit{Design Space Exploration}~(DSE) becomes a crucial issue. In this paper, we present such a hybrid synthesis methodology that applies a low-cost analytical method followed by parallel stochastic search-based optimization. We address the DSE challenge through efficient pruning of the design space and skipping unnecessary expensive testing and/or verification steps. The experimental results reveal up to 10.57x area savings in comparison with both purely analytical or search-based approaches.
Publishing Year
Proceedings Title
Proceedings of the 30th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020
Page
421-426
Conference
ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020
Conference Location
Beijing, China
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Awais M, Ghasemzadeh Mohammadi H, Platzner M. A Hybrid Synthesis Methodology for Approximate Circuits. In: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020. ACM; 2020:421-426. doi:10.1145/3386263.3406952
Awais, M., Ghasemzadeh Mohammadi, H., & Platzner, M. (2020). A Hybrid Synthesis Methodology for Approximate Circuits. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020 (pp. 421–426). Beijing, China: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3386263.3406952
@inproceedings{Awais_Ghasemzadeh Mohammadi_Platzner_2020, title={A Hybrid Synthesis Methodology for Approximate Circuits}, DOI={10.1145/3386263.3406952}, booktitle={Proceedings of the 30th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020}, publisher={ACM}, author={Awais, Muhammad and Ghasemzadeh Mohammadi, Hassan and Platzner, Marco}, year={2020}, pages={421–426} }
Awais, Muhammad, Hassan Ghasemzadeh Mohammadi, and Marco Platzner. “A Hybrid Synthesis Methodology for Approximate Circuits.” In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020, 421–26. ACM, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1145/3386263.3406952.
M. Awais, H. Ghasemzadeh Mohammadi, and M. Platzner, “A Hybrid Synthesis Methodology for Approximate Circuits,” in Proceedings of the 30th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020, Beijing, China, 2020, pp. 421–426.
Awais, Muhammad, et al. “A Hybrid Synthesis Methodology for Approximate Circuits.” Proceedings of the 30th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2020, ACM, 2020, pp. 421–26, doi:10.1145/3386263.3406952.

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