Publication Details

Search-based synthesis of approximate circuits implemented into FPGAs

VAŠÍČEK Zdeněk and SEKANINA Lukáš. Search-based synthesis of approximate circuits implemented into FPGAs. In: 26th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications. Lausanne: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2016, pp. 1-4. ISBN 978-2-8399-1844-2. Available from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7577305/
Czech title
Na prohledávání založená syntéza aproximativních obvodů pro FPGA
Type
conference paper
Language
english
Authors
URL
Keywords

Logic gates, Field programmable gate arrays, Table lookup, Optimization, Boolean functions, Design tools

Abstract


Approximate computing is capable of exploiting the error resilience of various applications with the aim of improving their parameters such as performance, energy consumption and area on a chip. In this paper, a new systematic approach for the approximation and optimization of circuits intended for LUT-based field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) is proposed. In order to deliver a good trade-off between the quality of processing and implementation cost, the method employs a genetic programming-based optimization engine. The circuits are internally represented and optimized at the gate level. The resulting LUT-based netlists are obtained using a commercial FPGA tool. In the experimental part, four commonly available commercial FPGA design tools (Xilinx ISE, Xilinx Vivado, Precision, and Quartus) and state-of-the-art academia circuit synthesis and optimization tool ABC are compared. The quality of approximated circuits is evaluated using relaxed equivalence checking by means of Binary decision diagrams. An important conclusion is that the improvements (i.e. area reductions) at the gate level are preserved by the FPGA design tools and thus the number of LUTs is also adequately reduced. It was shown that the current state-of-the-art synthesis tools provide (for some instances) the results that are far from an optimum. For example, a 40% reduction (68 LUTs) was achieved for 'clmb' benchmark circuit (Bus Interface) without introducing any error. Additional 43% reduction can be obtained by introducing only a 0.1% error.

Published
2016
Pages
1-4
Proceedings
26th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications
Conference
26th International Conference on Field-programmable Logic and Applications, Lausanne, CH
ISBN
978-2-8399-1844-2
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Place
Lausanne, CH
DOI
UT WoS
000386610400007
EID Scopus
BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{FITPUB11127,
   author = "Zden\v{e}k Va\v{s}\'{i}\v{c}ek and Luk\'{a}\v{s} Sekanina",
   title = "Search-based synthesis of approximate circuits implemented into FPGAs",
   pages = "1--4",
   booktitle = "26th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications",
   year = 2016,
   location = "Lausanne, CH",
   publisher = "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers",
   ISBN = "978-2-8399-1844-2",
   doi = "10.1109/FPL.2016.7577305",
   language = "english",
   url = "https://www.fit.vut.cz/research/publication/11127"
}
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