Presentation title

Hardware and Software Support for Transprecision Computing on Ultra-Low-Power Embedded Systems

Authors

Giuseppe Tagliavini, Michela Milano and Luca Benini

Institution(s)

Università di Bologna, Italy

Presentation type

Technical presentation

Abstract

The adoption of smaller-than-32-bit formats is a major opportunity to reduce energy consumption of ultra-low-power (ULP) embedded systems. In this work we discuss the advantages of an extended FP type system with complete hardware and software support to enable a novel paradigm known as transprecision computing on ULP platforms. As a first contribution we introduce FlexFloat, a software library that enables emulation of FP types by leveraging both precision and dynamic range of program variables. As a second contribution we describe a hardware design which supports two custom types - one 16 bit and one 8 bit wide - together with IEEE754 binary16 as a set of smallFloat formats. Finally, we provide an overview of our current and future work to design a transprecision programming flow which integrates the results provided by precision tuning tools and other transprecision techniques into a unified compilation toolchain.

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Additional material

• Presentation slides: [pdf]

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