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SyFAxO-GeN: Synthesizing FPGA-Based Approximate Operators with Generative Networks

Published: 31 January 2023 Publication History

Abstract

With rising trends of moving AI inference to the edge, due to communication and privacy challenges, there has been a growing focus on designing low-cost Edge-AI. Given the diversity of application areas at the edge, FPGA-based systems are increasingly used for high-performance inference. Similarly, approximate computing has emerged as a viable approach to achieve disproportionate resource gains by utilizing the applications' inherent robustness. However, most related research has focused on selecting the appropriate approximate operators for an application from a set of ASIC-based designs. This approach fails to leverage the FPGA's architectural benefits and limits the scope of approximation to already existing generic designs. To this end, we propose an AI-based approach to synthesizing novel approximate operators for FPGA's Look-up-table-based structure. Specifically, we use state-of-the-art generative networks to search for constraint-aware arithmetic operator designs optimized for FPGA-based implementation. With the proposed GANs, we report up to 49% faster training, with negligible accuracy degradation, than related generative networks. Similarly, we report improved hypervolume and increased pareto-front design points compared to state-of-the-art approaches to synthesizing approximate multipliers.

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)AxOMaP: Designing FPGA-based Approximate Arithmetic Operators using Mathematical ProgrammingACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems10.1145/364869417:2(1-28)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2024
  • (2023)AxOTreeS: A Tree Search Approach to Synthesizing FPGA-based Approximate OperatorsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/360909622:5s(1-26)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2023
  • (2023)Automated Generation and Evaluation of Application-Oriented Approximate Arithmetic CircuitsDesign and Applications of Emerging Computer Systems10.1007/978-3-031-42478-6_14(353-381)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2023

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ASPDAC '23: Proceedings of the 28th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference
    January 2023
    807 pages
    ISBN:9781450397834
    DOI:10.1145/3566097
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 31 January 2023

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    Author Tags

    1. AI-based exploration
    2. approximate computing
    3. arithmetic operator design
    4. circuit synthesis

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    ASPDAC '23 Paper Acceptance Rate 102 of 328 submissions, 31%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 466 of 1,454 submissions, 32%

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    View all
    • (2024)AxOMaP: Designing FPGA-based Approximate Arithmetic Operators using Mathematical ProgrammingACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems10.1145/364869417:2(1-28)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2024
    • (2023)AxOTreeS: A Tree Search Approach to Synthesizing FPGA-based Approximate OperatorsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/360909622:5s(1-26)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2023
    • (2023)Automated Generation and Evaluation of Application-Oriented Approximate Arithmetic CircuitsDesign and Applications of Emerging Computer Systems10.1007/978-3-031-42478-6_14(353-381)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2023

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