Comparison and Extension of Approximate 4-2 Compressors for Low-Power Approximate Multipliers

Approximate multipliers attract a large interest in the scientific literature that proposes several circuits built with approximate 4-2 compressors. Due to the large number of proposed solutions, the designer who wishes to use an approximate 4-2 compressor is faced with the problem of selecting the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on circuits and systems. I, Regular papers Vol. 67; no. 9; pp. 3021 - 3034
Main Authors: Strollo, Antonio Giuseppe Maria, Napoli, Ettore, De Caro, Davide, Petra, Nicola, Meo, Gennaro Di
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2020
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
4-2 compressors
Adders
approximate compressors
Approximate computing
approximate multiplier
Circuit design
CMOS
CMOS technology
Compressors
digital arithmetic
Logic gates
Measurement
Multipliers
Stacking
Topology
ISSN:1549-8328, 1558-0806
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Approximate multipliers attract a large interest in the scientific literature that proposes several circuits built with approximate 4-2 compressors. Due to the large number of proposed solutions, the designer who wishes to use an approximate 4-2 compressor is faced with the problem of selecting the right topology. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey and comparison of approximate 4-2 compressors previously proposed in literature. We present also a novel approximate compressor, so that a total of twelve different approximate 4-2 compressors are analyzed. The investigated circuits are employed to design <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">8\times 8 </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">16\times 16 </tex-math></inline-formula> multipliers, implemented in 28nm CMOS technology. For each operand size we analyze two multiplier configurations, with different levels of approximations, both signed and unsigned. Our study highlights that there is no unique winning approximate compressor topology since the best solution depends on the required precision, on the signedness of the multiplier and on the considered error metric.
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ISSN:1549-8328
1558-0806
DOI:10.1109/TCSI.2020.2988353