8,809 research outputs found
Evaluating critical bits in arithmetic operations due to timing violations
Various error models are being used in simulation of voltage-scaled arithmetic units to examine application-level tolerance of timing violations. The selection of an error model needs further consideration, as differences in error models drastically affect the performance of the application. Specifically, floating point arithmetic units (FPUs) have architectural characteristics that characterize its behavior. We examine the architecture of FPUs and design a new error model, which we call Critical Bit. We run selected benchmark applications with Critical Bit and other widely used error injection models to demonstrate the differences
Power Optimizations in MTJ-based Neural Networks through Stochastic Computing
Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have found widespread applications in tasks
such as pattern recognition and image classification. However, hardware
implementations of ANNs using conventional binary arithmetic units are
computationally expensive, energy-intensive and have large area overheads.
Stochastic Computing (SC) is an emerging paradigm which replaces these
conventional units with simple logic circuits and is particularly suitable for
fault-tolerant applications. Spintronic devices, such as Magnetic Tunnel
Junctions (MTJs), are capable of replacing CMOS in memory and logic circuits.
In this work, we propose an energy-efficient use of MTJs, which exhibit
probabilistic switching behavior, as Stochastic Number Generators (SNGs), which
forms the basis of our NN implementation in the SC domain. Further, error
resilient target applications of NNs allow us to introduce Approximate
Computing, a framework wherein accuracy of computations is traded-off for
substantial reductions in power consumption. We propose approximating the
synaptic weights in our MTJ-based NN implementation, in ways brought about by
properties of our MTJ-SNG, to achieve energy-efficiency. We design an algorithm
that can perform such approximations within a given error tolerance in a
single-layer NN in an optimal way owing to the convexity of the problem
formulation. We then use this algorithm and develop a heuristic approach for
approximating multi-layer NNs. To give a perspective of the effectiveness of
our approach, a 43% reduction in power consumption was obtained with less than
1% accuracy loss on a standard classification problem, with 26% being brought
about by the proposed algorithm.Comment: Accepted in the 2017 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Low Power
Electronics and Desig
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