2 research outputs found
An Energy-Efficient Generic Accuracy Configurable Multiplier Based on Block-Level Voltage Overscaling
Voltage Overscaling (VOS) is one of the well-known techniques to increase the
energy efficiency of arithmetic units. Also, it can provide significant
lifetime improvements, while still meeting the accuracy requirements of
inherently error-resilient applications. This paper proposes a generic
accuracy-configurable multiplier that employs the VOS at a coarse-grained level
(block-level) to reduce the control logic required for applying VOS and its
associated overheads, thus enabling a high degree of trade-off between energy
consumption and output quality. The proposed configurable Block-Level VOS-based
(BL-VOS) multiplier relies on employing VOS in a multiplier composed of smaller
blocks, where applying VOS in different blocks results in structures with
various output accuracy levels. To evaluate the proposed concept, we implement
8-bit and 16-bit BL-VOS multipliers with various blocks width in a 15-nm FinFET
technology. The results show that the proposed multiplier achieves up to 15%
lower energy consumption and up to 21% higher output accuracy compared to the
state-of-the-art VOS-based multipliers. Also, the effects of Process Variation
(PV) and Bias Temperature Instability (BTI) induced delay on the proposed
multiplier are investigated. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed
multiplier is studied for two different image processing applications, in terms
of quality and energy efficiency.Comment: This paper has been published in IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics
in Computin