Approximate Computing Extensions for the Clash HDL Compiler

Abstract:
Approximate Computing is a novel design paradigm sacrificing computational accuracy for gains in other non-functional properties, such as area, latency, and power consumption. Many approximation techniques operate on the netlist of a circuit. We believe that working on a higher level of abstraction is beneficial. For this, we chose the high-level hardware description language Clash. The language is based on the functional programming language Haskell, i.e. describes hardware in a very abstract manner allowing to focus on the functionality instead of technical details. We extend the Clash compiler to support multiple approximation techniques. Initial experiments show promising results with respect to reductions in area, latency, and power consumption of the synthesized approximated circuits.